The men's lightweight crew team closed out its regular season in dominating fashion Saturday morning, cruising through its final regular-season meet against MIT and Saint Joseph's on the Schuylkill River.
The victory - which was the Quakers' first of the season - featured sub-six minute times from all three boats in the varsity 8 and served as a definite morale booster heading into postseason competition.
"We are finding a little more speed each week," coach Mike Irwin said. "Even though we hadn't won a meet up until this weekend, we were successful in our goal of finishing with a complete performance."
In the first race of the day, the first freshman 8 boat nearly broke six minutes as well with a 6:00.3 performance. The Quakers maintained an early lead through the first half of the race, and fended off a determined MIT boat that attempted to pull away after the midway point. A strong sprint with 500 meters left allowed Penn to close out its opponents by a 2.9-second spread.
"Winning this race sets us up perfectly heading into [EARC] Sprints next weekend," said freshmen coxswain Domenic Nucci, who coordinated the final sprint.
The first varsity 8 boat proved that it was finally hitting its stride, clocking in with its best performance of the season. Its time of 5:51.4 in the 2,000-meter race crushed the competition, as MIT came in second with a time of 5:56.6 beating the Hawks' 5:58.3.
Saturday's victory followed two hard losses for the Quakers in consecutive weekends against Princeton and Navy, respectively. Against Princeton, Penn was blown out of the water, as the first varsity 8 finished with a time of 6:05.8, well behind the Tigers' 5:46.2.
Although the first varsity 8 dropped three seconds in the following meet against Navy, the rest of the team maintained a steady improvement. In an optimistic glimpse of what the future might hold for the Quakers, the first freshman 8 came close to knocking off their counterparts, finishing within five seconds of the Midshipmen.
"Two weekends ago, when we raced Princeton at home, we learned that we had some work to do if we wanted to keep up," Irwin said. "In the next weekend against the Naval Academy we thought that we made some positive steps forward, despite losing all of our races."
The Quakers will culminate their season Sunday with the EARC Sprints -- which ultimately determine the team's success. Penn's goal is to work itself into the top six so that it can compete for a chance to race in the finals.
"We feel like we have been getting better week by week.," Irwin said. "We are starting to peak at just the right time."
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