Sunday, Penn's heavyweight rowing team hopes to steer past April's troubles and glide to Ivy victory at the EARC Sprints.
Held annually at Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester, Mass., the Sprints include the Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges teams, which is comprised of the Ivies plus some other schools such as Navy, Northeastern and MIT. Each Ivy team will compete to upset defending champion Brown and win the Rowe Cup, which is awarded to the team with the highest combined points.
To win, the Quakers will have to put aside memories of an uneven 2009 season. The team started out strong in March, winning three of five races against George Washington, but has not posted a win against an Ancient Eight school in any of April's league regattas.
Yet Penn showed promise in late April's Adams Cup against Harvard and Navy, when the Varsity 8 tied for second.
Coach Fred Honebein believes that his team has grown stronger over the course of the season, and that April's regattas have been good preparation for Sunday's rigorous competition.
"I think that the team, as a whole, is improving week by week," he said. "[In] the Adams Cup . we started to get our legs and have some good pieces, some good work. It was very encouraging to see."
The third-year coach added that concentration will be a necessity to perform well in such an intense competition.
"They're very focused," Honebein said of the team, "There's a time when [they] have to . make sure that they are really focused on the individual effort and within that the team effort."
For Penn, the Sprints are just that time. The Quakers will surely want to finish higher than they did last year when both the first and second Varsity 8 teams placed 16th while the Freshman 8 finished 17th. The Red and Blue have not won the regatta since 1998.
