Washington hoisted the Varsity Challenge Cup for the 21st time on Sunday as the IRA blazed to a close. In a final that required watermanship as much as power, according to Washington head coach Michael Callahan, UW outlasted Harvard, Dartmouth, and Princeton to claim the prize.

"This place was challenging," Callahan said afterwards, with his team having navigated two days of semis and finals in the Cooper's tailwinds. "The whole mantra we were saying this week was you have to be a better oarsman and a better waterman. This isn't about power. No one is going to max out, so you have to row faster and you have to row better than everyone else."

Washington also won the 2V over Harvard, just one day after the two crews raced to a photo-finish tie in the semi--check out those times here. That Husky 2V set a new IRA record for the event (5:25.4) to do it, and the team came within a whisker of another sweep, but Harvard's 3V had the 0.03 it took to edge UW and give the Crimson a gold on the day to go along with silver in the 1V and 2V.

Harvard 1V

You can rewatch the 2V Eight Grand Final here.

The 3V times in that final round capped off the back-and-forth record-setting we saw on all three days by the third eights from Harvard, Washington, and Cal, who took the bronze in the end. Harvard's 5:29.06 on Sunday was the fifth time that event's 2024 record was eclipsed over the weekend in the fast, if tricky, water on the Cooper, to include UW's own 5:29.09 in the final.

You can rewatch the 3V Eight Grand Final here.

Gold in the 1V and 2V along with the 3V's silver earned Washington a 19th Ten Eyck Trophy, and Harvard moved up to second overall on team points this year. Wisconsin earned the Clayton Chapman Award for the most improved squad in the Ten Eyck points over last year.

Varsity Eight - Washington

The V8 Grand Final

In the Varsity Eight Grand, all the speed was on the high side of the course to Washington's starboard side. Harvard claimed the silver, but a year after being pretty happy with a second place to announce getting back to the top end of the league, this year's Sprints champs were not as pleased to finish runners-up despite a great race. The Dartmouth faithful were ecstatic to see the Big Green track with Harvard and hold off Princeton for the bronze.

On the dock to get their medals, Dartmouth seven seat Munroe Robinson only half-jokingly said, "Hey, thanks for coming back," to Billy Bender, the US Olympian who returned to the squad after a year off to make the Paris Games. Dartmouth took the bronze in the 2021 as well, but the Big Green's last medal in a "full" IRA came back in 1992.

Dartmouth 1V

Princeton, Brown, and Syracuse rounded out the Grand, and that helped Brown to fourth overall for the Ten Eyck just ahead of Princeton. As for Syracuse, they are the only school besides Washington to make the Grand every year since 2021. That, combined with putting all three eights into the Grands for the first time since back in 1978--Syracuse's championship year--put Syracuse into sixth for the Ten Eyck, the best team finish of Coach Dave Reischman's tenure.

See the full Ten Eyck scoring breakdown and where every eight finished here on the row2k results page.

The story behind Washington's latest win involved lineup changes after a loss to Cal at the MPSF Championships, but in the end, Washington also proved themselves the crew that raised their game the best over the three days of this IRA.

"Any championship regatta, you've got to build throughout the week," said Logan Ullrich, the Kiwi with the Olympic silver medal in the UW Varsity. "We came in and we knew we had a good speed, but each race we were going to have to get one better."

"Everyone's looking at each other, at the heat times and semi final times, and looking who's making those steps. We did what we needed to do in the heat, then stepped on in the semi and stepped on for the final.

"It was an amazing race out there," Ullrich added. "The other crews had an amazing effort, so credit to them. They pushed us all the way. We're really proud of the race we had and stoked to get the victory."

Logan Ullrich, OLY with the Varsity Challenge Cup

Washington's new line-up for the IRA brought the 2V stern pair and five-man Povilas Juskevicius up from the 2V that won the MPSF, and was a change Callahan made after the varsity took second to Cal at the new west coast championship.

Callahan said that both boats were "outstanding all year"--"the whole team was really strong but the top two eights were really on top of it," he said--but he felt like he could find more base speed with a different combination.

"When we went into the Cal race, I was waiting to see how they did," he said, looking back at the Dual. "It was a long race, there was a big wind building, and we won, but I thought Cal seemed to have little more base speed than we did.

"So I thought can I see if we can get more base speed by the MPSF? If not, I had a contingency plan."

The backup was to incorporate that stern pair of the 2V.

"The 2V always was rowing easier than the 1V. The stroke, Ryan Martin from Newport Seabase, is probably the story, but it wasn't just him. The guy behind him, Klas Ole Lass, they formed a very loose, easy rhythm in the 2V.

"I thought, can I transplant that fluidity into the varsity? We're talking about just a little bit of difference, it's a nuance, but they were just easier all the time," said Callahan.

The UW 2V took the win in their new line-up as well

He also tweaked the boating behind Martin and Lass: "The coxswain said when we do push, we need a more sustained push. Povilas had that ability to bring sustained power, and then Logan Ullrich, we pushed him towards bow, so he could feel like he felt the boat better."

Ullrich in two and bowman Harry Fitzpatrick just happen to be the team's fastest pair, according to Callahan, who said they told him it felt just like rowing a pair up on the bow of the new line-up.

"The combination started going very well," he said. "It immediately showed the easiness we wanted with some swagger and belief.

"It's hard to lose to California at the MPSF and then have belief again. But after the MPSF, we said, look, this isn't a defeat. This is just a learning moment, trying to get the boat to go faster.

"The mood wasn't down. We went quick, we rowed well, but they rowed better than us in the base."

UW 2V celebration

"We thought this would be the rubber match," said Callahan, who like everyone else in rowing expected to see Cal in the IRA Final, and he talked about Cal's misfortune in the semi. "This is probably not the way we expected it to happen, but it's sport. We hit the boom last year at Henley, too. Things happen and you have to race the races."

Being able to make the changes was, of course, a credit to the athletes who embraced them and made them work on the day.

"The top two eights are kind of guys who just come down the boathouse and they want to row. I've had people that really love rowing but then this is a group that made the right choices every step of the way.

"They say you have to have championship characteristics and habits before you win a championship, and these guys live that."

For Cal, bronze medals in the 2V and 3V and even slamming down the fastest time of the day in an outside lane of the Varsity Petite final, was not the weekend they had hoped for.

"It's not the result that we've all been working towards," head coach Scott Frandsen told calbears.com, "but I definitely feel a lot of pride and honor in how everyone conducted themselves and how they raced. We set our sights on winning the national championship every year and that's a thin branch to be out on. There's no other way to live so I'm proud of the group for how we dedicate ourselves to that every single year."

Chapman Award - Wisconsin

The Badgers won the Chapman award for the best year-on-year improvement: Wisconsin's 1V raced up to 14th in C Final after finishing 19th last year. The Badgers last won the Chapman in 2011 and, as one of the athletes picking up the award mentioned to head coach Beau Hoopman when he saw that on the plaque, 2012 was a pretty good year: Wisco 1V took 8th at that IRA and won the bronze at Sprints.

"We ended the IRA weekend on an upbeat note," Hoopman told uwbadgers.com. "We are greatly improved from last year. However, if you ask any of the guys, there's more that can be given and the returners are already looking forward to improving next fall."

Notes From the Course

Got Sponges? - One thing to do while you sit at the medals dock for the ceremony to begin? Well, after racing in some nasty chop, you can start sponging the boat out, which we caught a few crews doing while they waited.

"Times Should Not Be Compared" - We see this comment on results all the time on gusty days, and it's safe to say "variable" applied to both the wind and the texture of the water on Sunday. Hard to say how much conditions fluctuated, of course, but comparing races from this IRA could definitely be dangerous--and surely start some good online debates--because in the light men's Grand, Harvard's time was 0.1 faster than the Washington 1V's a half hour later...and Cal's 5:24, the fastest 2k of the day, in the 1V Petite, was a full five seconds quicker.

The Cooper Geese Conundrum - The geese really are a thing at the Cooper -- could it be time for some goose chasers to patrol the course on race day somehow? In the end, there were no goose strikes as bad as the epic Texas gallery from the 2023 NCAAs at the Cooper, but there were plenty of close calls.

Another close call in the 1V Grand

Just before the 1V Grand Final, row2k turned around in the media launch to see dozens of geese leaving the shore to fill lanes that had been empty just minutes before when the launch went by. In fact, once you page through the 1V Finals gallery starting here and you know where to look for the geese from the photos, you can see them pretty clearly in the video playback at the top of the article.

And One Note From the Broadcast Booth - The live stream's commentary crew was on new record watch all weekend, and while they enjoyed our recounting of the 3V record story on Saturday, they did point out that Saturday also gave us new records in the Varsity Four, both D3 Eights, and that 2V 'dead heat' semi--before Sunday started rewriting the 3V (and 2V) records again on the heavyweight side.

Always Camera-Ready - with the awards broadcast on the live stream, row2k reminded one coach to be sure he turned his good side to the camera, only to be told "I don’t have a bad side." Touché, coach.