Pari Hashemi

Since Ivy League student-athletes are not given scholarships, the women's rowing team's edging out of Duke, Iowa and Miami at the Rivanna Romp in Charlottesville, Va., was that much sweeter for coach Michael Lane. Penn was the only non-scholarship school in the race.

Freshmen usually don't get a chance to compete in rowing's varsity championship races. But at yesterday's Head of the Charles Race in Boston, the men's freshman four was given a chance to shine on the water and finished ninth out of 21 teams with a time of 17:11.

Val Cloud has lost plenty of recruits to William & Mary over the years. Indeed, a rising freshman spurned the Penn field hockey coach to play for Tribe. Cloud has returned the favor - tapping the high-school pipeline for talent that had considered the Williamsburg, Va.

The men's lightweight rowing season is one filled with familiar races and familiar faces: the Navy Day Regatta, the Head of the Charles, the Princeton Chase, the Callow Cup - all year-in, year-out events. But this season brings a less familiar foe to the water: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Amid such a trying season, the men's heavyweight rowing team is looking past its competition against other teams and instead focusing on personal improvement. And after losing to top teams like Harvard, Navy and Northeastern in the Adams and Burk Cups, that attitude has never been more crucial to the development of the program.

Tomorrow's race is named after Charles Francis Adams, Secretary of the Navy during the Herbert Hoover administration. But it's Harvard -- not Navy - that has dominated the Adams Cup, taking home the trophy each of the last seven years. Those two schools will join Penn for the latest installment of the battle that began in 1928.

San Diego may have been a pleasant respite from the dreary weekend weather in Philadelphia, but men's heavyweight coach Fred Honebein hopes that his team is "pissed off" after its trip out West. The team struggled, finishing 10th overall in the San Diego Crew Classic.

Every day in training on the Schuylkill River, the women's rowing team passes its Saint Joseph's counterpart, quietly sizing it up. "We're trying to start a rivalry," Penn coach Mike Lane said. "They're great competitors." Last Friday, the Quakers hit the two-kilometer course on the Schuylkill and showed Saint Joseph's what they were made of.

There are no stars on the Penn women's rowing team - and that suits head coach Mike Lane just fine. "The New England Patriots have a 'one-team' motto and so do we," he said. Lane added that this year's team has more depth and more intensity than previous years'.

This weekend the Penn women's squash team will compete against some familiar faces as it battles Yale, Brown, and Columbia over a two-day span. Some of Penn's competitors are former teammates. Coach Jack Wyant and freshman Annie Madeira became familiar with some of Yale's competitors over the summer working on the Junior National team.