W. Crew Hosts Green

The women’s rowing team will race at home this weekend, as the Red takes on competition from Dartmouth.
After having a strong showing in last weekend’s Dunn Bowl, placing second in three against Brown and Columbia, the Red hopes to continue its momentum into Dartmouth.
“We’re coming off a pretty successful weekend in the first varsity boat. We had a really big step forward last weekend, so the Dartmouth race should be an opportunity to keep our momentum going,” varsity captain Cathleen Balantic said.
The Dartmouth crew is sure to put up a fight, as the Big Green has been posting successful results in recent weeks. In last weekend’s Class of 1984 cup, Dartmouth varsity-8 boat posted a close second place finish to Princeton and beat out No.3 Penn. Dartmouth’s varsity-8 was just six seconds slower than Princeton’s, and came in from the 2000-meter race with a time of 6:43.1.
“Dartmouth is looking pretty good this year, but we’re hoping we can put up something solid against them,” Balantic said.
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Dartmouth’s second varsity-8 was also competitive, coming in second to Penn with a time of 6:52.2.
The Big Green’s freshman-8 came out victorious in its race, bringing home the only win on the day for Dartmouth. The boat won by a wide margin of six and a half seconds against Penn’s crew, with a time of 7:01.5.
As always, the Red is focused on being victorious. The team hopes to focus on its own technique this weekend rather than focusing on Dartmouth.
“The strategy is really just to go out as hard as you can and see what you can do,” Balantic said. “Every race has to be as ferocious as we can make it, maximizing our potential in every single race.”
The Red will be on home waters this weekend and will have the benefit of knowing the course very well.
“It’s our course. We’ve been rowing on that water every day for the past couple of months and it’s our time to shine,” Balantic said.
As the season progresses, the team continues to make adjustments and improvements.
“We are a dark horse in the league,” Balantic said. “We started off pretty conservatively in our first couple of races, and we didn’t put up anything too impressive. And we’re still figuring out our fastest combinations, but every race has been a step forward for our boats. Our novices have had a really successful season, and the varsity is really gaining a lot of momentum.”
This race marks the last of the regular season for the Red, as the crew will participate in Sprints in two weeks.
“I think that once we get to our championship sprints in a couple of weeks, I think we have the potential to really shake up the status quo and surprise some of our competition who have beaten us in the regular season,” Balantic said.