April 18, 2008

Crew Stays Home, Goes to Yale

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This weekend, the men’s lightweight rowing team will have its hands full as it will travel to Princeton for a dual meet against Princeton and Rutgers and then travel to New Haven to face Yale on the same day.
The men’s heavyweight and women’s rowing teams will both stay in Ithaca for their own dual meets this weekend against Navy and Syracuse and Penn and Rutgers, respectively.
“It’s going to be a pretty big challenge to have to race Princeton on their home course and then get back in the van and drive to Yale and race them on their home course,” said men’s lightweight senior captain Matt Kochem. “We’ll make the most of everything regardless of what happens, but we really want to win this one, though, because it will show how strong we are.”
[img_assist|nid=29984|title=Down to the river|desc=The women’s crew team will stay in Ithaca this weekend to face Navy and Syracuse.|link=node|align=left|width=|height=0]
The men’s lightweight squad has shown plenty of strength this season, including last week when the team retained the Mathews-Leonard Cup after defeating Ivy League rivals Penn and Harvard.
“We’re feeling pretty good right now,” Kochem said. “Last week, our varsity boats won all their races, so we’re pretty happy about that. But there’s always room for improvement.”
The Red won three-of-five races including the varsity-8 race, which Cornell won with a time of 5:46.9.
The women will be hosting their own dual meet this weekend against Penn and Rutgers.
Last weekend, the women traveled to Boston to compete against Princeton and Radcliffe where the varsity boats ran into some trouble against two very strong opponents. The novice-8 and novice-4 boats, however, raced well with the novice-8 showing particular promise after missing out on first place by a mere one second.
“We’ve had some mixed feelings about our results,” said women’s head coach Hilary Gehman. “We’ve had some tough competition so far this season. Our novice has done really well but our varsity boats have some work to do. We’re hoping to bounce back this weekend against Penn and Rutgers.”
The women’s competition won’t be getting any easier, however, the Red knows it needs to work on its race rhythm among other things in order to improve and they want to use this weekend’s race against Penn and Rutgers to show their full potential.
“We’ve definitely identified what we need to work on,” Gehman said. “Now we just need to execute. I’m excited for the upcoming meet.”
Men’s heavyweight rowing will also be hosting a dual meet this weekend against strong Navy and Syracuse squads.
Heavyweight has performed very well this season including a strong showing in the Pac-10 Invitational as well as their most recent four race sweep against Georgetown in their last meet.
The men will have their work cut out as Navy is also coming off a strong season opener at the George Washington Invitational which saw them win all three races they competed in.