Rowers Return From California Full of Confidence

The men’s heavyweight rowing team will stay in Ithaca this weekend to face Georgetown while women’s rowing will start off its spring season by facing Syracuse and No. 1-ranked Yale.
Heavyweight is coming off a successful showing in the highly competitive Pac-10 Challenge where it faced off with some of the top boats in the country.
The men’s varsity eight boat defeated UCLA by over 27 seconds but was not as successful against Stanford. The second varsity eight defeated Stanford earlier in the day by over seven seconds but fell to UCLA in the afternoon. Both boats lost to California the next day.
[img_assist|nid=29504|title=Connect four|desc=The men’s crew team competes at the Syracuse Invitational on Nov. 3. The team is riding momentum from a successful outing in the Pac-10 Challenge in California.|link=node|align=left|width=|height=0]
“I feel like with the experience we got last weekend at the Pac-10 Challenge most of the guys are feeling pretty positive,” said men’s heavyweight captain senior Dan Holodnik. “Both boats lost to Cal on Sunday but we are still confident. We now know how fast we are relative to the competition. Cal is supposed to be the No. 1 team in the nation and now we have a benchmark to judge how much we have to improve to be the best team in the country, since that is one of our goals this year.”
The Red faced Georgetown during the fall season at the Princeton Chase, the Head of the Charles and the Belly of the Carnegie. Both the varsity eight and four finished ahead of the Hoyas at all three events, however the Red still knows the importance of this event.
“Our team is definitely not overlooking Georgetown,” Holodnik said. “They are going to put up a serious fight and it could be a very tough race.”
The women will start out their spring season this year by traveling to New Haven to face Syracuse and Yale.
Yale is the No. 1 ranked team in the nation this year and will be attempting to defend its national title in the women’s varsity eight.
“Our first race this spring is going to be challenging,” said women’s head coach Hilary Gehman. “Yale won the national championship last season. This race is important for us.”
The women have found success this year against Syracuse including the Syracuse Invitational where the varsity four claimed victory in the A flight with a time of 18:46.4, which outpaced the second-place Syracuse boat by 12 seconds.
“We feel pretty good,” Gehman said. “We’re in a much better place now then where we were at this time last season.”
The women had a great fall season including a strong showing at the season-opening Head of Genesee where the Red claimed victories in both the Open Eight and Open Four races.
“We had some of our best results this past fall,” Gehman said. “The team is pretty excited.”
The team is lead by senior captain Caitlin Mance along with fellow seniors Eleanor Bucholz, Sarah Griffin, Kimberly Kraemer, Julia Lippman, Delana Spaulding and Katherine Storbeck.
“We really want to be more successful than last year and be competitive in each race,” Gehman said.