The race saw the Bulldogs taking home the Cup for the 37th time, with Penn coming in third in both the first and second varsity races.

A high school boat veered into the middle of Penn’s lane roughly 800 meters into the 2000m race, taking the No. 13 Quakers out of contention and helping ensure the fourth victory in a row for No. 15 Princeton with a time of 5:45.0.

The Penn men’s lightweight rowing team will host the annual Matthews-Leonard Cups, which involve races between Penn and Cornell. This year, Harvard has been invited as a guest and will participate in the race, though the contention of the Cups is only between Penn and Cornell.

The weekend proved to be a mixed bag for the Quakers rowing teams. While the men’s lightweight rowing team had a successful weekend against MIT, the women’s team finished third out of the three teams in the Connell Cup.

The men took home the McCausland Cup at George Washington’s expense after losing the Burk Cup to Northeastern in the morning. Meanwhile, the women’s team swept both George Washington and St. Joseph’s.

Roughly fifty strokes, or 500 meters, will be the main focus of the Penn women’s crew team when it takes on St. Joseph’s and George Washington this Saturday on the Schuylkill River in the first race of the spring.

Jim Senese, Engineering senior on the Heavy Weight Crew Team, has chosen to build a device — which expands like a telescope — that will be able to shift oars outward and inward. The system is similar to that of gears on a bike.

It’s been said that conflict and a huge time commitment make rowing at Penn difficult to commit to. And as an ex-rower who was a member of the freshman heavyweight team all last semester, I was being asked to commit again.

I am writing you this letter to thank you for all you have done for my teammates and me over the years. In light of John Phillips’s DP article, I thought it was an appropriate time to recognize you and your colleagues in the Athletic Department who put so many thankless hours into making the student athletes at Penn better students, athletes and people.

I think it’s really sad that of all the articles Mr. Phillips could have written about this team, full of interesting, talented, intelligent and unique women, he instead chose to focus on two of the small minority that have chosen to give up and walk away from this fantastic group.

Although the article claims that we have lost 11 “rowers with pedigree” in the past two years, we have actually lost eight and only three of those were in one of the three boats eligible for NCAA championships.

Rowing is one of the few varsity sports on campus that allows walk-ons without hesitation at the beginning of each year, but it has struggled with the departures of many rowers, even experienced ones.

Renovations of Hutchinson Gym have displaced the women’s rowing team from its normal indoor practice facility, forcing the squad to split time with the men’s programs in Hollenback and Franklin Field.

Walking on is common in the sport of rowing, which many athletes don’t begin or even have access to before college.

At the Head of the Charles Regatta, the men’s lightweight, men’s heavyweight and women’s teams will be joined by 9,000 athletes in what is the ultimate two-day competition.

On Saturday, the crew teams participated in the Navy Day Regatta, and with multiple top-three finishes, there is much to be optimistic about for this upcoming season and beyond.

The Penn crew team will compete in the historic Navy Day Regatta this weekend to celebrate the 237th birthday of the United States Navy.