Team strength was on display at Lake Natoma today, with the Washington men sweeping the regatta and the Cal women taking care of business in all four of the races on the women’s side. It was a beautiful morning for racing with flat water and just a slight headwind blowing up the course. Let’s get straight to the action.
CAL WOMEN GO FOUR FOR FOUR
The Novice Eight and Varsity Four for the Cal women came into the regatta top-seeded and unbeaten--and both crews made good on that to come through with wins.
“The four was fired up!” said associate head coach Sarah Puddicombe following the racing. “What’s great about this regatta is the four was on the water when the novice eight was coming down the course and they could see that they were in a really good race and that got them excited to get in to the start blocks and fire off the line.”
The regatta ran on 20 minute centers so the events were fairly spread out and it was important for the Bears to get the regatta off to a fast start. Puddicombe added, “The four knew this was a total team event, and that during their race, the second varsity eight would get to see their race come down at about the 1k. So they wanted to get out to a lead and set the tone for us for the rest of the day.”
The rest of the team followed suit: the Cal 2V jumped out to a quick lead in their event and beat Stanford and top seed UCLA by a length. Following them, the varsity eight stormed through the field and beat previously unbeaten USC to finish off the regatta.
The racing was not without a bit of drama though: the second straight year that unusual circumstances have hit the women’s varsity eight race (remember last year's thunder, hail, and wind storm?). This year, things got weird when USC stopped rowing after 100 meters, to protest the start: the Trojans, in lane 1, thought that Cal had false started in lane two. The protest was not accepted, and USC was issued a false start. At some point during this sequence, Cal’s cox box went out and so the Bears raced the re-started 2k without one, defeating USC and Washington by two seconds.
On the NCAA selection front, Cal wins the conference’s automatic bid. Washington and UCLA look to be locks for at large bids from their performance today combined with strong regular season resumes. USC had a tough regatta, save for the 2nd place finish in the 1V, finishing 6th in the 2V and 7th in the four. They likely have done enough to get an at large bid, but that puts Stanford and WSU on the bubble.
The Bears came into the regatta as the top ranked team in the most recent national poll and will certainly be one of the favorites in two weeks when NCAAs hits Mercer Lake in New Jersey. “The challenge now is going into NCAAs, and it’s going to be another big team effort,” said Puddicombe. “I think that’s one of the strengths of our squad is that it’s all about the team. The four will be starting us off again, so they just want to keep training hard and earn all the points they can earn to help the team.”
THE WASHINGTON MEN’S JUGGERNAUT
There’s not a whole lot that can be said about this year’s Husky men’s squad other than they are incredibly deep, incredibly talented, and incredibly fast. All their boats have won by open water in every race so far this spring, and this now includes two races against Cal and a dual with Sprints champ Brown.
Cal fought hard and kept things close in the varsity eight for the first 750 meters, but Washington started edging away smoothly from there. The Huskies really opened up the margin in the last 250 meters, coming home at a powerful 40 strokes per minute for the win.
“We have been working on executing a complete race plan all year and, before this weekend, we have come close, so the goal for today was to really nail the full 2k from start to finish,” said senior captain and bowman Rob Munn. “I think we did a good job today and we’ll just spend the next three weeks trying to get a little bit faster each day.”
The JV and Four for Washington both had big wins over rival Cal. The freshmen eight featured the closest race, with Washington winning by just under four seconds over Cal. The rematch between these two crews in Camden could be a tight one.
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