For the second time in three years, the US Naval Academy won the Patriot League championship, this time with a sweep of all three events that wasn't assured until the last two or three strokes of the regatta as the Navy varsity eight came from behind to sprint past Bucknell for the win. With the sweep, the naming of the Patriot League automatic NCAA qualifier was a fait accompli, as Navy locked up the points trophy as well without anyone really having to do any math.
In the offing, the Navy V8 was named the Patriot League Boat of the Year, and coach Mike Hughes was named the Patriot League Coach of the Year. The Navy squad was seeded first coming into the championship, but Hughes was still marveling by his team's ability to make it happen on the day with a sweep.
"I don't think you orchestrate a sweep," he said after the race. "If you can do that, I think what happens is you train them the best you can and you get them ready mentally. We do a lot of mental training along with a lot of physical training, which obviously everybody does. But we try to do training for them to see themselves where they are today."
As the grand finals got underway, the Navy four made the first strike with a six-second win racing away from a very spread-out field. The second Varsity followed suit with a five-second victory. Both races had been pretty much over very early, with another spread out field in the 2V save for a dog fight for bronze between BU and Holy Cross - , but when the V8s came down the lake with Bucknell leading Navy by a hair, folks were getting out the calculators to see how much a silver in the V8 was worth.
With five strokes to go, Navy locked into a groove that gave them real traction coming to the line – although I am pretty sure none of the athletes knew who won until after they got back to the dock. It was Navy by about a foot or less, and the championship was locked up.
"The four was really the outstanding one of all the boats," Hughes said. "I wasn’t sure about the 2V, but I knew they had a shot. And the varsity I knew was going to be a helluva boat race. So we tried to help them prepare to go as fast as they can given their physical ability."
Discussing the crew's sprints, Hughes noted that they didn't really wind up the rating very high, but instead tried to keep reaching back for water.
"Most important in a sprint like that, when you’re that close, is not to shorten up," he said. "We only got to 38. It would be nice to go higher but we’d have to go shorter. But staying at 37-38 from a base of 35-36just gave us enough punch in the last few strokes so that the boat kind of lifted out of the water and just took off, so it was really, really rewarding."
The Navy squad is the second team to earn an automatic qualifier to the 2015 NCAA Championship, joining the UMass squad who qualified last weekend.
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