Wellesley repeated as the D3 Champion, winning the school’s first back-to-back championship and their third overall title.
Last year, Wellesley won the title with depth and consistency, placing second in both eights while two different schools won the individual races but could not match the Blue Crew’s point total. This year, the Wellesley 2V was second again, and again to Bates in fact, a crew which came through the reps to get that win after one of the surprises in Friday's D3 heats.
In the 1V, though, Wellesley won out, weathering a bid by Ithaca in the first 500 and then taking the lead in the middle thousand to secure the win by a length over Wesleyan. Ithaca earned themselves a third place finish with their gutsy race, after not making the final at the NIRCs two weeks ago.
Interestingly, Wesleyan did not make the NIRC Grand either, and actually took second to Ithaca in that Petite, but both crews peaked at the right time to get ahead in the tightly packed D3 field here. The 1V’s silver gave Wesleyan second place overall, their highest NCAA finish to date.
Tufts also collected their best team finish ever, getting on the podium as the third place team after taking fourth in both races but edging Bates by finishing two spots higher in the 1V.
For Wellesley, taking a second title just two years removed from a 2021 spent in small boats and without racing was especially sweet.
“They've just been a really strong team right from the beginning of the fall,” said head coach Tessa Spillane.
“We brought in a lot of first years who wound up racing here this weekend, which is really exciting. But even at the Head of the Charles, the 1V came in second behind Mercyhurst and the 2V placed eighth in the field, which was just such a strong indicator of what they could do come spring if they all put their heads down and did the work over the winter, which they did.
“The spring’s just been about them being a unit, the entire team pushing upward and making the whole program as fast as it could be.
“We have a great group of seniors, there are eight of them that raced here today, and they've been so instrumental because we we missed two spring seasons. Last year was our first spring back after COVID and the seniors just set the tone for what they wanted their last two years to be.”
For Wesleyan, the 1V’s second place showing, along with Ithaca taking third to push Tufts and Bates down a spot, was enough to get Coach Pat Tynan’s squad the runner-up spot on the podium—-and a lot of that 1V’s performance was down to some good old-fashioned figuring it out.
"Our varsity just had more time together and started to blend,” said Tynan, “and they figured things out today.
“The 2V and the Varsity were the same speed for a lot of this year, so I was sort of pulling my hair out a little bit,” he admitted, “and no matter who we switched around, they just continued to stay the same speed and then we finally thought that we figured some things out before our Trinity race and our 2V continued to be fast. But these kids, they love to race and I know when it's close, they’re going to do what it takes to at least give themselves a shot.”
Ithaca’s Becky Robinson said she was thrilled with the performance of her eight here at the end of the season:
“Their strength has been getting off the line quick,” she said. “We have been working on maintaining speed through the middle and working the sprint. I thought they did both well in the final."
Even with a repeat champion today, and Bates winning the 2V for a second year in a row, different D3 teams are finding ways to push to the front.
"There were six different teams getting medals and trophies today," noted Tynan. "That's pretty awesome, and it wasn't always that way. For a long time you saw these dynasties and now it's just super competitive, and that's what makes Division 3 really exciting."
"The awesome thing is that in Division 3, it really could be anyone's race," Spillane added. "Like yesterday, watching the heats and then watching the finals, and saying, wait, this is really happening.
"When you had Williams dominating for so long, I think a lot of other teams were like, hey, we could go do that too if we buckle down. And then it started happening. Bates did it. We did it, then Bates did it four times in a row, right. So it's really cool, and the camaraderie amongst Division Three is really awesome, too."
You can find the complete D3 team points and individual boat placings on the the results page.
Notes From the Course
Hearts at the Line - as Coach Spillane mentioned above, the D3 teams really feel a strong sense of camaraderie, and you could see that in the Lewis and Clark and Washington College Varsity Eights: making heart signs and other encouragement to each other after the finish of their Petite Final.
Getting Back in Plenty of Time - the order of the D2 and D3 Finals this year, which ran the D3 2V, then the D2 Fours, then the D3 1V before the D2 Eights final was--with the Petite finals added in--more than enough time for the D3 athletes from the 2V to put their boat away up in the boat yard and hoof it over to the finish area to watch the full Grand Final that decided the title. That included the Wellesley 2V watching the jumbotron arm-in-arm as a crew, When there is long walk involved at a venue like the Cooper, getting over in time doesn't always get to happen, but it was fun to watch all the 2V's arrive to cheer on the their varsity eights.
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