Saturday was race day and the conditions were perfect.
The water was calm and there was a slight tailwind along the entire 2,000 meter stretch of the race course. It was precisely the kind of conditions rowers dream of when they race Harvard on the Charles.
But for Dartmouth's varsity women, it was not just the weather that made last weekend so sweet, it was the victory that followed.
Technically, the race was a three-way regatta between Dartmouth, Syracuse and host Radcliffe. But in reality, it was just a dual race between two colors -- green and crimson. After the first half of the race, orange was simply out of the rough-and-tumble color war.
Thus, what remained was your classic Dartmouth-Harvard/Radcliffe rivalry. Two almost even boats placed head-to-head at the start and continued to grind it out for a grueling six minutes.
Both teams were hungry off the start, the crimson team only slightly more so than the green team.
"We started off down two seats," Kathleen Eibl '98 said. "This was really disappointing because we were really hoping to get the lead early in the race."
For the middle 1,000 meters of the race, things remained fairly even, with both teams trying to streak ahead going into the second half of the race. Feeding off each other's moves, the two boats ended up swapping one or two seats, up and down, right up until the last 500 meters.
And that's when the ladies in green cranked up the pressure and started to walk through their crimson rivals.
"With 500 meters to go, we just decided the we wouldn't cross the line two seats down. We dug deep and found some focus in the boat. And once we got things together at the 300 meters to go mark, we just took off," Eibl said.
At the finish, Radcliffe trailed Dartmouth by 1.9 seconds. It was not an easy win, and it certainly was not a blowout win, but it was still a key victory for the now 5-1 varsity squad.
In the other weekend races, the third varsity four continued to show its dominance with a crushing sweep of Radcliffe and Syracuse, while the second varsity boat captured third place.
In the novice competition, both Dartmouth crews finished third behind Radcliffe and Syracuse.
"We rowed aggressively," Becky Frost '99 said. "But we didn't necessarily row together."
The novice boats are looking to avenge these loses at Sprints later on this season.
This weekend, the women's crew teams will launch on the Connecticut River to take on Ivy League rivals Pennsylvania and Princeton in their 1996 season home opener.
