Ending the fall season on a high note will not be enough to ensure the men's lightweight crew team a successful spring season.
According to coach Mike Irwin, "the fall for us was just a way to kind of keep building momentum."
Last year's spring proved to be productive. The Quakers struggled some in the middle of the year, but won the Lev-Brett Bowl and later placed third of six at the IRA Regatta.
And while the Quakers lost valued seniors from that year, they still look to improve for this spring.
This fall season was a tool to help reach that goal.
Penn won the varsity eights races at the Princeton Chase in New Jersey as well as the open eights at the Head of the Schuylkill in Philadelphia.
Irwin went on to explain the main difference between the fall and the spring seasons.
"The top seven crews were all within eight, nine seconds of one another. That's not a big margin," he said. "Fall racing is three miles and spring racing is 2000 meters, which is a mile and a quarter.
"The spring race is shorter and much more intense and those margins get compressed."
Teams that do well in the fall may not in the spring and vice versa, due to the drastic differences in the races. The fall is competitive but is used as more of a practice season in preparation for the spring.
Fall races are also run differently. They involve huge regattas where boats start the race in increments. Times are calculated, and winners are announced later.
The spring season consists of head-to-head races with fewer teams, where the winner is declared on the spot.
Despite the inconsistency between the ways the seasons work, the team can still take from the fall valuable training and experience. Speaking about the varsity team, senior captain Tim Mahoney said that "we have a lot of varsity experience from last year and will use it to gear us in the right way."
Unfortunately for the newcomers, the freshman boats received less time on the water this fall than they have in past fall seasons.
"I guess we really don't know how the freshmen will do because, well, it's complicated," said Mahoney.
He went on to list a change in the team's coaching staff and miscommunication within the team as two significant factors leading to more complications. Whether or not these will play a major role in the spring season remains to be seen.
Tomorrow marks the first race of the spring season. The varsity and freshman teams will face Rutgers in the Lev-Brett Bowl.
The Quakers beat the Knights in the fall Princeton Chase race, the one fall event in which both teams competed in. Penn won in the open eights with a time of 13:37.19, while Rutgers placed 11th with a time of 14:03.11 -- a 26-second margin.
However, as Irwin and Mahoney both explained, this one race may not be a good indicator of tomorrow's outcome.
For both the Lev-Brett-Bowl and the remainder of the season, much is yet to be known.
