Like all of Dartmouth's fall regattas, the Belly of the Carnegie was a single-file headrace, as the boats began with a staggered start and placement was determined by their recorded times.
The Big Green women's boats finished individually in fourth and eighth places out of 24 boats. Their times were 15:56.7 and 16:04.5, respectively, good for second overall when combined. Princeton had the fastest open weight women's boat with a time of 15:32.9. Taking first in combined times, the two Radcliffe boats finished in 15:50.4 and 15:57.9.
Oddly enough, as at the Green Monster Invitational, the fastest women's boat was the Radcliffe women's lightweight boat, which finished with a time of 15:30.6.
"The novice women did well; we raced hard and came out with the second fastest combined time in our field," freshmen women's coach Amelia Siani said. "This weekend's results show that we have some good speed in our boats, we're excited to further test that speed at the Foot of the Charles."
The men's heavyweights finished behind two Princeton boats and a Navy boat. The Dartmouth men finished with a time of 14:07.2. Princeton took first and second with times of 13:54.04 and 13:55.9 on their home course. Navy took third place, clocking in at 14.04.2.
"The guys had a pretty rough race and didn't look too good as they went by but went rather fast nonetheless," said freshmen heavyweights coach Eric Kratochvil. "Our boat had four novices, so given that, I think we did pretty good."
The Dartmouth lightweights were in the middle of the pack and had the sixth-fastest combined times out of the 10 teams that had two boats racing. Navy had the fast boat and best combined time. Their first boat finished in 13:49.5 and their other boat in 14:01.4. Harvard had the second-fastest boat with a time of 13:49.9.
"The 'A' boat entry had a great first part of their race catching up to Columbia very quickly in the first 1,000 meters," lightweight coach Brian Conley said. "However, they had a lot of difficulty once they were even with them to get through them. The 'B' boat immediately had difficulty finding their rhythm off the start and continued through the race until closer to the end of the course." The meteorologists were calling for rain at the race but it did not start to precipitate until after all competition had concluded and the teams were packing up for the road. There was a weak tailwind that did not seem to have an effect on the results.
With their short fall season coming to a close, the freshmen look toward their last race of 2006 next weekend at the Foot of the Charles in Boston, Mass. and the months of conditioning ahead. At this point in their collegiate rowing careers, gaining racing experience is still paramount.
"These races in the fall are simply to teach freshmen what it means to race and push beyond their limits of what they think they can do," said coach Conley. "I think that we are achieving that on a regular basis, but came up a little short of putting it together on race day."
