The Big Green crews fell short in all but two races this weekend as the JV lightweight eight and the freshmen lightweight eight took home Dartmouth's only victories on Saturday.
While the women's crews and the lightweights struggled on their respective roadtrips to Princeton, NJ and Ithaca, NY, the heavyweights went head-to-head against the perennial powerhouse crews from Brown on the home course on the Connecticut River.
In a four-way regatta against host Princeton, Penn and Virginia, the women's varsity line-up trailed the Tigers by seven seconds to take third while the Lady Cavaliers took top-honors in 6:57.7. The Big Green were 13 seconds off Virginia's winning pace.
"We finished closer to Princeton then we did last year at Sprints which is a good checkpoint for us," senior co-Captain Rosi Kerr said. "We are honing in on a race-plan that really works for us."
The closest race of the day for the women was in the first novice eight where Princeton edged Dartmouth by just over three seconds.
At Ithaca, Cornell's varsity lightweight eight won the Baggaley Bowl as they crossed the line nearly eight seconds ahead of Dartmouth.
The Big Green's JV lightweight eight, meanwhile, remained undefeated as they flew past the Big Red to beat them by seven and a half seconds. They will enter the Eastern Sprints Regatta ranked first in their division in two weeks.
While Dartmouth earned another win in the first freshmen eights race, Cornell won the third varsity fours race and the second freshmen eights race by three seconds.
Brown, ranked second in the East, dominated the heavyweight races this weekend as its varsity eight finished nine seconds ahead of ninth-ranked Dartmouth to win the Atalanta Cup.
The best showing for the heavies on Saturday came in the first freshman eights race where Dartmouth held even with top-ranked Brown until the final 200-meter when the Bears cranked a furious sprint to earn a narrow two-second victory.
Next weekend, the women travel to Ithaca to take on Cornell while the heavies fly to Madison, WI to take on the Badgers and the Engineers of MIT. The lightweights have no races scheduled until Sprints.
The heavies are planning to use the Wisconsin race as a last-minute prep race before Sprints.
"This week all of our energy, wrath and anger will be focused on flying over 2000 meters Saturday morning," heavyweight co-Captain James Jarrett '97 said. "Wisco will have to contend with nine determined and angry men...we will get medieval."
