The women's crew team, which has already secured victories over the University of Tennessee and the University of Louisville this past weekend, will compete against Northeastern University, the University of Rhode Island and Boston College this weekend.
This was the earliest in a Spring season the women have competed in a regatta.
"We were a little bit nervous and definitely feeling a bit under prepared," women's crew coach Wendy Bordeau said. "We had only been on the water for a week, so it was a very early race."
The first varsity team defeated Tennessee by 1.5 seconds with a time of 6:14.18 and Louisville by almost six seconds in 6:29.1.
The third varsity team also won both of its races, while the second team did not manage to best either the Cardinals or the Volunteers.
This season, the team is hoping to maintain the level of success it achieved last season, when it qualified for the NCAA Championships for the first time since 1999.
Bordeau said she was confident in the team's ability to improve from last week for the regatta this weekend.
"This past weekend helped us pinpoint what we need to work on," she said. "We pinpointed some weaknesses. We found some strengths. We're ready to get to work on both of those, so next weekend is a step forward for us."
Still, Northeastern has had a particularly strong fall showing and will be a challenge for the Big Green, she added.
On the men's side, the heavyweight team is coming off an impressive 12th place finish at nationals last season.
Coach Topher Bordeau said one of the biggest differences between this season and last season is the robust presence of young rowers on the team.
"We're a fairly athletic team, but we're fairly young," he said. "What will determine our success against Holy Cross and beyond is whether we come out with the enthusiasm and inspiration of a young team, which would be positive, or if we come out with navet, innocence and inexperience, and that would be negative."
Looking ahead, Topher Bordeau said that since qualifying for the national championship has become more difficult this year, the team will have to step up and perform a lot better than last year at the Eastern Sprints in Worcester, Mass., to have a chance of making it.
"Our dual racing schedule includes several of the top 10 crews in the country," he said. "There are two sides to that coin, on the one side we have a really difficult schedule, but on the other side that really prepares us well for Eastern Sprints."
In the lightweight division, the team's year is marked by several changes, most notably the introduction of new lightweight crew team head coach Dan Roock, who replaced former coach Steve Perry this season. The team is hoping that the new addition will help make the Big Green, who failed to qualify for the National Championships at Eastern Sprints last year, a lot more competitive.
"The morale has been very high right now," captain Joshua Patch '10 said. "We've changed up our training quite a bit, and everything seems to be working itself out the way you would expect from being coached by a coach with so much experience."
Against Penn and MIT, Patch said the team is hoping to build off of the momentum from the training trip and post wins against both schools.
"I think we will be ready once we get to the weekend," he said. "We've got a good amount of work to do this week, but I'm confident that we will be ready."
