After battling their way to a third-place finish in the petite final this past weekend at the Eastern Sprints in Connecticut, the women's varsity eight's season hangs in limbo until this afternoon, when they will hear if their performance was enough to qualify them for next weekend's NCAA Championships.
"The petite final was a really exciting race," varsity co-captain Anna McCall-Taylor '00 said. "We knew going into it that any one of the crews could end up being first -- or last."
Excitement is perhaps an understatement -- Syracuse was named the runner-up to Northeastern after videotape determined that Dartmouth was behind at the finish by a bow ball. Final times put the Orange at 6:57.00 and the Big Green at 6:57.10. Northeastern crossed the line in 6:55.70.
Most significant in determining bids to nationals may be Dartmouth's out-muscling of Wisconsin and Penn, who finished fourth and fifth, respectively, after giving headaches to the Big Green all season.
"We were also very close to Syracuse and Northeastern, two crews who'd beaten us by a lot earlier this spring," McCall-Taylor pointed out.
Defending national champion Brown secured a decisive victory over runner-up Radcliffe in the grand final of the varsity eight.
Dartmouth's JV boat won their petite final by a margin of seven seconds over second-place Rutgers to take twelfth overall. The third varsity four ended up eighth on the day.
The novice eight posted the Big Green's best overall finish on the day, rowing to fourth place in the grand final and beating Wisconsin by one-tenth of a second.
Finally, the second novice eight rallied back from a disappointing morning to win the petite final with open water behind them.
