In one of the best Sprints finals ever seen, the Yale Varsity 8 bumped their bow out early and kept it there despite an onslaught of effort from almost the entire field, right down to the finish line.
After the race, announcer Dave Vogel exclaimed "To have fully five boats across right through the 1500 meter mark, and then three of them keep it coming all the way in – you just don't see that all the time."
In taking the V8 with seven of the nine athletes from last year's NCAA Champion crew, Yale bested slightly their 2007 loot takeaway, winning the V8 trophy, the Chick Willing points trophy, and the massive and somewhat peculiar Ivy league trophy, as well as the squad also won the A and B varsity fours and the novice eight. The V8 was a fantastic ending to a really good day of racing, with five boats within two to four seats for at least 900 meters, then within five-six seats approaching the 500 to go mark. Yale's lead was down to a seat and a half as the crews crossed the 500 as Radcliffe and Princeton started going for the line and slipped away from Brown and Dartmouth. Yale responded by shoving their bow out just enough to stay clear of the fight for silver in the adjacent lanes, and Radcliffe had the juice in the last five strokes to take silver. As the three crews approached the medals stand, it was clear that the athletes in all three crews knew they had just been part of a spectacular boat race.
"We knew the race was going to be a burner, and we just tried to stay internal, to do what we need to do in the race," Yale head coach Will Porter said after the varsity collected their trophies. "I think sometimes people don't give our league enough credit, but Sprints crews have won five of the last six NCAA Varsity eight races, so by the time you get to the varsity eight final here, you know you are up against coaches who know how to coach, and athletes who are battle-hardened from the regular season.
"So we just kept things internal, and looked for an opening towards the end of the race. You could always use a little more at the start than we had, but I think they rowed our race pretty well."
Porter reflected on the differences between this crew and Yale's 2007 breakthrough crew that won Sprints and went on to win the NCAAs. "Every crew is different, but in 2007, no one knew about us," he said. "Now there are a lot of eyes on us, and it is a different challenge when people are watching."
Porter wasn't quite ready to look ahead to the NCAA championship on the same piece of water two weeks hence. "For now I'm just going to enjoy the day," he said. "But we know we'll need to try to find another gear in the next two weeks – and so will everyone else," he said. "It should be a great NCAA's."
In the lightweight women's eight, Wisconsin continued an undefeated season with an extraordinarily confident race in which they took just enough of a lead to be comfortable in the early going, and then understroked the field almost the entire way, only really laying it on in the final 700 meters or so to win by a generous patch of open water over a tight pack behind them led by Princeton, who dialed in their silver medal spot with a big push just before the midway point of the race, and never gave it back, then Georgetown and Radcliffe, with MIT a bit behind the pack.
Wisconsin has gone the past month without a race – their last race was on April 19 – but it did not seem to hurt their execution any. "We took the opportunity to switch people around, and did some seat racing and tried a few different lineups for a couple weeks," Wisco coach Erik Miller said after the racing. "It was really close racing, so it wasn't easy to select, because we have a lot of good kids. It's a good problem to have." After a day of 1000 meter pieces rowing six boats across with Wisco crews from throughout the program, and the final lineup was selected about 10 days before the Sprints
"Today we wanted to handle the conditions well, and not get away from good rowing," Miller said. "We wanted to make sure we had a good race, and I told them it would be a fairly quick race, so didn't want them to wait too long to start pushing. The race went pretty much to plan, and we were really happy with it."
Wisco now has three weeks to prepare for the light women's eight national championships at the IRA Regatta on Lake Natoma in June. Miller said they may continue seat-racing amongst the crew, with a little help from the men's program. "Our 2V really dominated today, so we may take another look at the lineups, and I talked with Coach Clark about possibly doing some pieces with the men's fours, so that should provide some good racing." Will Wisco really need more at Nationals? "I think we would rather have more and not need it than need more and not have it," Miller said.
Most of the light women's crews will continue on to the IRA in June, while all eyes in the the open programs will be on the NCAA selections Webcast on Tuesday at 5pm; see our In The News section for a link to the broadcast. For all the crews ending their season this weekend, well rowed, and tremendous luck to everyone selected to join the show at NCAA's in two weeks.
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