In a season in which the men’s heavyweight crew team only once posted a sub-six minute time, the three-day Intercollegiate Rowing Association National Championship Regatta in Sacramento, Calif., last week capped off a disappointing year with slightly unexpected results.
The initial heats last Thursday were the toughest for the Quakers, as the first and second Varsity 8 boats attempted to conserve their energy and posted their slowest times of the weekend at 6:22.91 and 6:23.10, respectively.
“You’re limited by power for three days. If you have to give 100-percent each day, your reserves go down,” third-year coach Fred Honebein said. “That’s why you see [programs] who have incredibly deep teams at this point in time — they’re able to sustain, reload and fire off again. That’s what we’re striving for.”
The first Varsity 8 recorded its best time at 6:11.83 in the repechage but regressed in its semifinal and final heats to finish in 20th place out of 22 teams.
After the initial heat, the second Varsity 8 outperformed their teammates the rest of the way, finishing fourth in the petite final race at 6:08.11 to finish in 10th place out of 14 teams.
Over the course of the season, the varsity boat typically posted times several seconds faster than the junior varsity, so Honebein called last week’s results “totally unusual.”
The first Varsity 8 placed ahead of only Holy Cross and Cal San Diego while finishing behind the other six Ivy League schools competing in the category (Yale competed in the Varsity 4). The junior varsity boat finished only 1.4 seconds behind Cornell in its final and placed ahead of both Columbia and Dartmouth.
“That’s the thing that’s been a little bit frustrating,” said Honebein, who added that the second boat’s performance was a better indicator of the status of Penn’s program. “[Junior varsity] really took to the race extremely well, and I’m really happy with what they did.”
In a vacuum, junior varsity’s modest success was not overly impressive, but Penn will graduate only two seniors from that boat (and five overall) and will look to build from the remaining core. Honebein is excited to see what he called a “very capable” recruiting class this fall, but the returning rowers will also have to work hard to improve in the offseason.
“The coach has a lot to do with success, obviously, but the athletes also have to take it upon themselves to … keep themselves fit in the offseason,” Honebein said. “If they come back out of shape, then we don’t start on the same page as a lot of the teams we compete against.”
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