This weekend, the Cornell men’s heavyweight crew accomplished something it hadn’t done in nearly a decade. By going to Annapolis, Md., and returning to East Hill with the Goes Trophy and the Stagg Cup, the crew established itself as an irrefutable national powerhouse.
The annual competition has pitted three perennial strong crews in Navy, Syracuse, and the Red against each other since 1955. The Goes Trophy is given to the winner of the first varsity race, which the Red (4-0) won during this year’s contest by four seconds over runner-up Syracuse with a time of 6:05.7.
The Stagg Cup goes to the the team totaling the most points in the first and second varsity and first novice races. The Red won both varsity races and placed second behind Navy in the first novice race.
On Saturday, the women’s novice boats dominated Penn and Rutgers while the first varsity boat dropped to 1-4, taking third place in the race with Rutgers winning at 6:35.16.
Yesterday saw Cornell’s first varsity boat drop another race to a strong University of Virginia squad by a nine second differential. The most exciting race of the weekend came when UVA literally inched out Cornell’s second varsity boat by eight tenths of a second.
It was then the novice crews’ turn to put on yet another show for the Inlet Faithful — winning the first novice race by nearly 12 seconds and the second novice race by a 16.8 second margin.
The men’s lightweight crew (1-5) traveled to Mass., on Saturday to take on Columbia, Penn, and MIT for the Geiger Cup. For the fifth straight year Columbia walked away with the title, winning the first varsity race by ten seconds over the second-place Red boat with a time of 6:19.9.
The Red was second in the overall standings but could not break the Lions streak which began in 1997 after the Red had won the award for the prior five years.
The men’s lightweight crew was then stunned yesterday by a very fast Yale squad which swept each of the five races in which Georgetown also competed. The best showing of the day came from the Red’s second freshman boat which lost in a tight race from start to finish by one second with a time of 6:17.3.
The heavyweight men next head to Yale to take on the Bulldogs and Princeton. The lightweights take on Dartmouth in Ithaca next Saturday and the women are at Brown on that same day.
Archived article by Scott Jones