The women's crew team prevailed in its triple meet with the University of New Hampshire and Northeastern University Saturday morning, beating the closest team by more than six seconds.
Dartmouth's first boat completed the 1750-meter course on the Oyster River in 5:59, ahead of New Hampshire's time of 6:05 and Northeastern's time of 6:10.
Coach Barbara Kirch said that corresponds to a margin of victory of more than a boat length.
Though she said she would not call the victory a rout, Kirch said "it was a good win."
Varsity Coxswain Vanessa Santaga '96 said her boat "raced them to the thousand. Then we walked through them and kept the lead for the rest of the race."
"UNH tried to come back on the sprint, but we held them off," she said.
Santaga said throughout the race she followed the race plan in guiding the first boat.
"We raced our own race, and we raced to win," she said.
Both women's novice boats beat their counterparts from New Hampshire and Northeastern. The junior varsity boat finished behind Northeastern.
The saltwater Oyster River only offers 1750 meters of rowable water, less than the standard 2000 meters, Kirch said.
"We race there every year, because normally everywhere else is frozen," she said.
Kirch described the conditions as "ideal."
"It is tidal out there, and we managed to race at slack tide so there wasn't much current and there was absolutely no wind. It was absolutely flat, which it never is there," she said.
Kirch said there was potential for Saturday's race to be tight.
"UNH is having a good year, and we're dealing with the fact we graduated all but two people from the varsity boat from last year," she said.
"They are definitely young, but the team will be getting faster all spring," Kirch said.
"We are stronger than I expected, given the circumstance of having lost so many people. We'll be working incredibly hard every day of the season to come out at or ahead of where we were last year," she said.
Kirch said her crew has been having trouble at the starting line.
"Last week at San Diego they were last off the line of six crews," she said.
"We have had trouble with our starts. This time it was much better," Santaga said.
The team's next match-up will be against Boston University and Yale on the Connecticut River next Saturday.
Kirch said she anticipates intense competition with both teams.
"B.U. beat us by two-tenths of a second last year, but we beat them at [the Eastern Sprints]. They don't seem stronger than last year. It will be a close race with them," she said.
"Yale will be a very tough race," Kirch said. "They had a very strong fall. I see no holes in their program right now."
"How we do against them will be a real indicator of how we'll do this season," she said.
"The people in my boat are for different personal reasons quite determined to beat Yale. I know we will rise to the occasion because we're psyched," Santaga said.
