Saturday was just altogether a hectic race day for the women's crew team. And it certainly made for some stymied expectations for its big races against Penn and Princeton.
Things first fell out of synch early in the week when the home race course on the Connecticut River became flooded with huge logs and other sorts of debris. Add to all this, a ridiculously fast current by midweek, and the Connecticut was soon transformed into a coxswain's worst nightmare.
These horrid conditions left the crews with only one option -- to move the races to more navigable course. So southbound they went to Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester, Mass. For many of the rowers, the Quinsigamond course was unfamiliar territory.
"It was a tough weekend," co-Captain Kim Sanderson '96 said. "We had never raced in Worcester before, and of course we would've preferred to challenge Princeton on our home course. But there was really nothing we could do about that, and, overall, I think we made the best of the situation."
Dartmouth ended up finishing second in that race, down a length to Princeton and ahead of Penn by half a length.
"It was a frustrating weekend, but we learned something from the whole experience and we're just two weeks away from Eastern Sprints," Sanderson said.
The victory over Penn moved Dartmouth higher in the weekly team rankings. But next weekend, rankings will not matter as the women take to their home course to challenge Cornell for the last race of the regular season.
"We try not to focus too much on the rankings because when we actually race head to head, it doesn't really matter who's ranked higher," Sarah Kopplin '97 said. "What matters is who crosses the line first."
Looking ahead into the final two weeks of the season, Kopplin was very optimistic. "We're going to get everything together by Sprints," she said.
In the other women's races, the second varsity finished third while the third varsity boats (two fours) finished third and fourth, respectively, behind two Princeton boats. It was the first loss of the season for the third varsity squad.
For the novice crews, this was a weekend that they would love to just forget about entirely, or at least replay under different conditions.
While the first boat finished second behind a strong Princeton boat, the second novice crew came in third. But that is only half the story.
The worst part of the weekend came when the second novice crew lost one of its oars.
"At the 1,000 meter mark, one of our oarlocks popped open and we lost an oar," Kristin Heist '99 explained. "We had to row by sixes for awhile before we got things together again."
Common sense tells you that you cannot row without an oar, let alone win a race without an oar. What this little incident suggests is that the weekend was not the greatest of race weekends for the women's crews. The good news is that things can only get better from here. Five weeks down, two to go until the annual showdown at Sprints.
