Despite a strong showing in the Third Varsity Eights, Penn women’s rowing fell short at the Ivy League Championships, finishing seventh overall.
In the two-day-long event in Pennsauken, N.J., all eight Ivies raced along the Cooper River, vying for an Ancient Eight title. But with 26 team points, Penn left the river having only beaten Cornell, while Princeton claimed its ninth-straight outright Ivy title and an automatic bid to the NCAA championships. The Quakers’ sole medal came from a third-place finish by the Third Varsity Eights.
Going into the championships, Penn was seeded No. 22 nationally — the fifth-ranked team in the conference coming into the weekend. The Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association rankings placed Penn behind No. 5 Yale, No. 7 Princeton, No. 9 Brown, and No. 19 Dartmouth.
However, these rankings didn’t hold, as Penn fell behind Columbia and Harvard in team points, earning them a humbling seventh place out of eight schools. The Yale Bulldogs swept in to take the team title for the second-straight year.
Although the Ivy League Champions proved to be a disappointing outing for the Red and Blue, it wasn’t without its highlights. With a time of 6:41.7, Penn’s 3V8 crew placed just behind Brown and Yale, who stopped the clock at 6:35.8 and 6:37.2, respectively. This marked the best showing for Penn, earning the team’s only medal of the day.
The boat was led by senior Maya Spunberg in the stroke seat, junior Maxine Moody in the bow, and junior Riya Patel as the coxswain. Spunberg’s boat beat fourth-place Princeton by a margin of about five seconds.
This was just one of four Quaker crews this weekend, with three Eights and one Four on deck for the Red and Blue.
After struggling in the preliminary heats, Penn’s 1V8 and 2V8 were unable to qualify for the Grand Finals. Out for redemption in the second finals of the 1V8 and 2V8, the Quakers bested both Cornell boats. The Big Red were left trailing by a margin of 13.755 seconds in the 2V8, but managed to claim a much closer 4.104-second losing margin in the 1V8.
The Varsity Fours were the last to compete, and with Penn trailing more than eight seconds behind the leading Harvard, the Quakers finished sixth, stopping the clock in 7:15.8.
Princeton ended with three wins across all races, followed by Yale with two, and Brown with a lone victory in the 3V8 final.
Despite Yale taking the overall team points title, the Princeton Tigers ultimately clinched an automatic NCAA berth by just one point following their success in the Varsity Eight and Second Varsity Eight Grand Finals.
On Tuesday, the at-large bids for the NCAA Division I Women’s Rowing Championship were announced, with the Quakers not being called for the first time in five years. At last year’s NCAAs, Penn was seeded as No. 15 out of 22 teams, one of six Ivy League teams to make the cut.
Staff reporter Luke Petersen covers national politics and can be reached at petersen@thedp.com. At Penn, he studies philosophy, politics, and economics. Follow him on X @LukePetersen06.
