Rowers fall short of goals, again

All the Quakers wanted to do last weekend was row, row, row their boats - intensely and consistently - down the Cooper River.

But by the time the Penn light- and heavyweight crew teams departed from the Intercollegiate Rowing Association Regatta in Camden, N.J., neither squad was satisfied with its performance in the championship event.

Heavyweight took part in over five events, yet did not once even qualify for the grand final. Coach Fred Honebein offered praise only for the junior varsity eight, who finished second in the Petite Final and eighth overall.

"They suffered the most adversity over the season, in terms of having to deal with injuries and sickness. And each week . when different athletes were thrown into the boat, they handled it extremely well. They were able to execute, and it was a great thing to see."

Indeed, those were the two themes of Honebein's overall evaluation: injuries, and execution. Although the team was near full strength this weekend, it was plagued by all sorts of ailments during the regular season, including one player with a brain tumor and another with a staph infection.

Even at the Regatta, one of the participants in the freshman four got sick. That not only disrupted that boat's chemistry, but also had a ripple effect as substitutions were called up from other boats.

"You don't want to cry over spilled milk, but the fact is we had a really tough season," Honebein said. "I think we handled them very well when we had to, we just weren't able to close to deal when we needed to in the last race of the year."

That was the second key point. With the exception of the junior varsity eight, Honebein felt as if his team was not as good as it could have been.

"It's just the nature of the sport," he said. "Sometimes you're on and hitting everything right and executing how you did in practice, and sometimes you're not.

"We could spend hours trying to speculate what the problem was," he added. "But the fact is we didn't perform. And we know we didn't perform. And that's the part that's hardest to take."

Lightweight, meanwhile, was only invited to participate in one event, the varsity eight. The Quakers struggled in the morning, placing fifth out of six schools in their first heat. Only the top three advanced to the championship.

But in the Petite Final in the afternoon-essentially a consolation race for the six schools eliminated from the two morning heats-Penn took second place, good for eighth overall.

Coach Mike Irwin had mixed feelings about the day.

"We're happy that we were able to achieve a more consistent performance" than during the year, Irwin said.

But, he added, he and his players were very unhappy to finish lower than sixth.

"The goal is always to make the grand final," he said, "and the fact that we weren't able to do that year means we fell short of our goals for the season.

Irwin called for early aggression, and the idea for the Regatta worked. With the championship on the line, the Quakers were in the thick of things halfway through the race. But in the second half of the 2000-meter race, Penn could not sustain its high speed and intensity.

"We rowed the race plan we needed to row, but we couldn't do it well enough to stay in the top three," Irwin said.

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