The men’s and women’s crew teams traveled to New Jersey last weekend for the Princeton Chase, where they saw mixed results. The top eight and top four for men’s heavyweight finished 36th and 24th, respectively, while the same boats for men’s lightweight both came 12th. The women’s team performed better, with its top eight coming in ninth and its top four coming in fourth.
The Princeton Chase is the last race until the spring season. The Big Green competed in the Head of the Charles in Cambridge, Mass., on Oct. 19 and 20 and did not see strong results, finishing in the bottom half of every race.
“The fall racing season is more of a festival, the regattas are more social than anything else,” lightweight captain Sam Morris ’14 said.
Additionally, because of Dartmouth’s late start to the academic year, the crew teams have been in the water for less time than their opponents, which often affects early results.
“We have about six weeks of practice time before our first race in the fall, while most schools are getting somewhere in the ballpark of eight to 10 weeks,” lightweight head coach Sean Healey said.
The women’s crew team had an impressive showing. Its top eights came in ninth and 17th place out of 52 teams. The first boat greatly improved on last year’s outing, where it took 30th place.
The women’s varsity four boats placed two in the top 10 at fourth and sixth with another boat in 11th. The novice boat finished 11th out of 14 teams.
“We ended up in the middle of the pack among the Ivies, so we’re still hoping to use the improvement that we found throughout the fall to help us,” captain Anna Harty ’14 said. “We need to capitalize on that improvement.”
Men’s heavyweight raced two eights and three fours Sunday. For eights, the first boat finished the course with a time of 13:43.491, but it picked up a 30-second penalty for rowing out of bounds.
“We were trying to go around another crew and we went out side of a buoy,” Ryan O’Hanlon ’17 said. “It was only by a tiny bit, but as soon as you leave the race course it’s a penalty.”
Instead of finishing 12th, the boat fell 24 spots with the penalty.
“We still had a good row before that,” O’Hanlon said. “It was just a slight damper on the mood knowing that we could have come a lot better in the standings than we did.”
The first boat finished just six places ahead of the second boat, which took 42nd with a time of 14:24.109. Despite the poor showing, the team is still pleased with its performance.
“We’re missing a bunch of upperclassmen because they’re all on off-terms,” O’Hanlon said. “Basically for the number of young guys we have in the top-tier boats and the improvement we’ve done over the fall, we’re happy with the race.”
The heavyweights also raced three fours, which finished 24th, 27th and 47th, with the top four finishing in 15:47.677. The freshman eight-plus saw the best finish of any men’s heavyweight boat, finishing 15th out of 32 teams in 14:43.704.
“We just rebounded from our eights race, we were proud of that,” O’Hanlon said.
Men’s lightweight had an overall better showing than the heavyweights. The top eight completed the race in 14:07.38, good for 12th place. The B-boat finished 29th and the C-boat was scratched from the race.
“Objectively, that’s not very good, but it really does not concern me that much that we didn’t do that great,” Morris said.
The top lightweight four finished in 12th. The rest of the Dartmouth boats finished 24th, 26th and 28th, while one was scratched.
“I think we had a decent performance,” Healey said. “I think we can still stand to take a good step forward, but we have time in the next three weeks on the water and then again throughout winter training to really start to improve upon a lot of those technical points.”
The next race for Big Green crew is in April.
