Rowers Head to Princeton Chase

The rowing teams are preparing for a calmer weekend than last weekend as they head to New Jersey for Sunday’s Princeton Chase regatta. Coming away from the hectic Head of the Charles with mixed results, the teams hope for an improvement in both the weather and the performances.
For the heavyweight men, fellow Ivy League crews will provide some of the toughest competition. The Red finished only one second ahead of Yale and 10 seconds ahead of Princeton this past weekend.
“At the Charles we came in first out of the boats that we are racing [this] weekend,” said senior coxswain Jimmy Germano. “We are hoping to build off the Charles and win the Chase, which is something we haven’t done in a long time.”
The invitational offers a unique opportunity to race smaller boats as well, so the heavyweights will race two- and four-person boats to help establish the varsity lineup.
“The core group of guys we have in the varsity now are probably going to be the same, but the lineup might shift a little bit,” Germano said. “Racing smaller boats allows different combinations of guys to be looked at for the coaches, and it’s also really fun to watch the race take place because there are always accidents.”[img_assist|nid=32951|title=Making a quick getaway|desc=The men’s heavyweight crew finished just seconds ahead of Ivy foes Yale and Princeton this past weekend and has a chance to widen the gap this weekend in N.J.|link=node|align=left|width=|height=0]
The lightweight men will look for a second chance to defeat Ivy League competition. As the Red has dominated collegiate lightweight rowing for the past three years, an obvious motivation is to uphold the tradition. Finishing seven seconds behind Harvard and twenty seconds behind Princeton last weekend, Cornell will seek to eliminate the gap between them and the league rivals.
For the women’s rowing team, better weather and a second attempt may be all the young team needs to improve upon last weekend’s performance. With a boat of mostly sophomores, race experience is a limiting factor and is the ultimate goal heading into the weekend.
“We don’t want to worry too much about the results,” said senior coxswain Michelle Colacion. “We want the race to feel good, we want to feel powerful.”
As the last Ivy League crew to cross the line at the Charles, the Red hopes to get back at some of those competitors.
“Hopefully we can improve our time a little bit and use the experience we got at the Charles just to have more confidence going in,” Colacion said. “And hopefully we can push the rate and have a little bit more success. We weren’t happy with the results [last weekend], but we learned a lot and we can definitely come back strong at the Princeton Chase.”