The Northeastern women have dominated the CAA Championships since its inception 10 years ago, winning the last five championships (all but one of them with sweeps), and having won eight of the 10 team titles. Conference rivals have been in perennial pursuit, especially the Drexel women, but none have been able to get their bowballs in front, save for Drexel's V4 last year.
In 2019, Drexel managed to get ahead in two events, the V8 and the V4, but Northeastern stayed close enough in both events that a win the 2V8 gave them the points lead, and thus the team championship and NCAA automatic qualifier spot.
"We talked all year how this is a team sport, and how we really had to rely on each other all year, and it took everyone of our athletes today to do this," Northeastern head coach Joe Wilhelm said after the racing. "Every crew came here with the idea of rowing their best race and try to win the event they were in, and we felt the conference race would take care of itself if we did that.
"Honestly, the varsity eight finishing second, we were pretty devasted at the end," he admitted. "When I told them what the second varsity had done, they turned that into cheers, which was nice."
The Northeastern varsity is a young crew, with four freshmen and no seniors in the ranks, and are looking forward to the extended season.
"They feel like they had the race that they came here to have, and they finished second, and all props to Drexel," he said. "I think they're happy to have two more weeks of rowing in front of them."
The winning Drexel V8 and V4 found their speed in somewhat different ways, the former with momentum, the latter with blessed naivete.
"A third of the way through the spring season, the varsity eight found another level of speed, from the San Diego Crew Classic to here, and we were able to capitalize on that," Drexel head coach Paul Savell said. "It was a battle. We were neck and neck with Northeastern, and they had a really good second half and were able to break away.
"Once they realized what they could do, and believed in their own speed and their own abilities, there was no stopping them. You can't put that back in the bottle."
"The four is all freshmen, so that was just exciting," he said. "They have no idea what happened before this year, so they came out fresh, 'of course we're supposed to win.'"
Savell acknowledged that not winning the team championship was tough going.
"It's a bitter pill, no question," he admitted. "We couldn't quite pull it off."
Wilhelm said that the competition is good for the conference and for his team.
"It is definitely good for the conference to have other teams on the medal stand here today, and it's definitely pushing us to do better," he said. "For a while we were the crew with the targets on our back, and now we're the crew that/s trying to keep up with everybody else.
"It's good for the athletes; it builds resiliency, it builds character. Hopefully, we pick up some speed in the next couple weeks, because it's going to get harder."
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