We’re in the heart of spring, which means one thing: the rowing season is in full swing.
On Saturday, No. 10 Penn heavyweight rowing traveled to Carnegie Lake in New Jersey to take on Ivy League rivals Princeton and Columbia. The Childs Cup featured three traditional crews of Penn, Princeton, and Columbia with one new addition: Stanford. The Stanford Trees made the trek out east to test their might against some of the Ancient Eight’s best. The Quakers had a tall task ahead of them going into the morning First Varsity Eight race.
On top of a difficult lineup of opponents, Penn had to navigate complicated morning course conditions.
“It was challenging on the Lake, particularly in the morning,” coach Al Monte said. “There was a cross headwind coming across the racecourse, and pretty choppy conditions on the water. This makes it really hard to compare times from race to race.”
Penn’s A boat finished behind first-place finishers Princeton and runners-up Stanford in the Childs Cup race. The crew of eight Quakers was able to best last-place finishers Columbia pretty handily, but ultimately failed to take home the victory.
“I would have liked the team to perform a little bit better in the morning session,” Monte said. “We tried a few lineup changes and some different race strategies that, frankly, I don’t think worked in the morning. It wasn’t necessarily the strategy but the execution of the strategy that didn’t work as well as I was hoping for the guys.”
In the afternoon, Penn’s top boat would race again, this time in a head-to-head fashion against No. 9 Syracuse as part of the larger Princeton Invitational event. Although the Red and Blue again would fall short, they left the water with some positive things to take home and their heads held high.
“We had to turn things around in the afternoon,” Monte said. “We rowed a different lineup, mainly changing the stroke seat, just to try to find a different rhythm. We got a lot better of a result against a very strong Syracuse boat. While we came up short, I was really happy with the way that they executed the second race.”
The Fourth Varsity Eight had the most success on the day out of all the Penn boats, winning both of its races. In the morning, this crew bested Princeton by a three-second margin and easily beat the Lions. In the afternoon, they would beat Columbia again, as well as their other Ivy League rival, Brown.
The Third Varsity Eight showed resilience on the day. This young crew, comprised of freshmen Moses Lewis and Nick Antich, sophomores Keenan Heinz, Oscar St. Pierre, Luke Meisenbach, and Chris Inglis, junior James Glomb, and senior Matt Radell, improved from morning to afternoon. Penn fell to the Tigers with a 2.7-second margin and earned a second-place finish in its first race.
“Conditions were pretty bad, and I just don’t think we went into that race with a great mindset,” sophomore stroke seat rower Keenan Heinz said. “I think a lot of us came off the water a little bit upset, and I think we knew we could all do a lot better. We took some time off, and then, fortunately, in the afternoon, we got to race against Syracuse. We don’t race against them. They aren’t usually a part of this event, but this year, a lot more teams showed up, so we took the opportunity to race again and do better. I think we went in with a stronger mindset and almost had a little chip on our shoulder.”
Indeed, they took their opportunity. The Quakers bested the Orange with a near four-second margin of victory, leaving the Princeton invitational on a high note.
More cup races against top rival programs are up next for heavyweight rowing. The regattas serve as stepping stones to the Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges Sprints and Intercollegiate Rowing Association National Championships at the end of the season. Penn will continue making small tweaks over the next few weeks to ready itself for these upcoming matches.
“We prioritize all of these events equally,” Monte said. “We are fully at our peak fitness and peak readiness at the end of the year. Right now, we prioritize training over racing. We go out there every week, and we want to win; that’s the goal. But in high endurance sport like ours, you only get one or two opportunities to actually be at your full readiness and need to plan for that.”
The Red and Blue are in the midst of running the gauntlet in preparation for the national championships. This Saturday, they travel to the Housatonic River in Connecticut to take on Yale and Columbia at the Blackwell Cup.
