Friday at the IRA is all about setting the stage, and by the end of the morning, a feast of fast weekend racing was ready to go as we saw the heavyweight semis and the finals for both the Lightweight and Division III men fall into place.

The champs of both the West and the East--Washington and Brown--won their heats to lead the HWT semis...and will actually meet each other in a top-seed-heavy semi on Saturday--more on that below.

For the Lightweights, #1 Harvard led the way in heat one and Penn won the second heat--which ran, delayed, at the end of the morning after a long wait occasioned by a warm up area incident that damaged the bow of Penn's shell and required some boatwright magic to get repaired.

In the Division III heats, Wesleyan--this year's favorite--and Williams--the two-time winner--set the pace, and will meet to decide that championship on Saturday, along with Trinity, Tufts, Bates, and the Coast Guard crew making its IRA D-III debut.

Wesleyan, in pole position for Saturday's D-III Final

The afternoon got the fours finals sorted out: with Washington, Cal, and FIT winning the three HWT fours semis, and Columbia and Penn winning the LWT four semis.

Heavyweights

Last year, our reporting made a lot of the parity at the top end of the heavyweight ranks, something many of the coaches spoke about at the time, but then Cal dominated the racing and swept the regatta. This year, the parity is real: not only did none of the Varsity eights come in undefeated, but a number had wins, or losses, against the other top seeds.

The quick list? Harvard beat Washington in Florida back in March, Princeton beat Harvard and Brown, then lost to Brown at Sprints, Washington beat Cal, and Cal--who had boatloads of IRA gold medalists to work with again this year after winning everything last year--kept closing their margin to UW.

Just how open might the field be? Well, we did see the top two seeds, Washington and Brown take wins, along with 4th seeded Cal, but then: Harvard.

The Crimson won their heat, as the six seed, over that Princeton crew that had beaten them for the Compton Cup and at Sprints, which shook things up just a bit.

"They've had a good season," said Harvard coach Charley Butt about his crew. "They started out with that win in Florida and raced everybody well. It's a long spring, academically and athletically, and it's a young crew, mostly sophomores. So you have the inevitable ups and downs. You lick your wounds, or you celebrate a win, and then you turn the page. You come back and have another go."

"I just think it's a crew that's decided that they can do better, and they did a good job this morning. Two races to go yet."

That Harvard win, which really just involved getting away cleanly from Princeton and the field to a point where Princeton could not reel them back in, wound up being the fastest of the four heats: Harvard's 5:34.0 and Princeton's 5:36.5 stood as the top two times in the V8, just ahead of 1-seed Washington's 5:36.8.

The #6 over #2 results did create some drama for Saturday: with one of the top 4 seeds being a second place finisher, the randomized semi draw--which places two 1st place crews, two 2nd place crews, and two 3rd place crews in each semi--put Princeton's very dangerous crew in a semi with Washington, Brown, Yale, BU, and Dartmouth.

More below on how the progression works, straight from IRA Commissioner Gary Caldwell, but suffice it to say that is going to be one hot semi--and more than one of those crews might have preferred to land in the other one, with Cal, Harvard, Penn, Stanford, Syracuse and Northeastern.

Washington coach Micheal Callahan felt like his Huskies had a good first day of what he knows is really a three-day test for the crew that can win it.

"It's important to get a good start in this regatta," said Callahan, "and with the new format of not having reps, we anticipated the racing would be tighter and people would be racing more of the whole piece. We had to make sure we were mindful of that and you're always trying to put yourself in the best position in order to advance.

"I thought everyone rowed to the level of what we needed to do and that's what you're trying to do on the first day. What you show today and what happens on Sunday could be totally different things, but it was a measured piece. We were able to prevail and put ourselves in the best position we possibly can, in terms of what we can control."

Brown coach Paul Cooke talked about bringing his crew here to race for the IRA title fresh off their dramatic win at Sprints, and how the crew rounded into that form at the end of the season.

"That was a really good race at Sprints and then you turn the page and now it's a whole other situation," said Cooke. "For Sprints, we did some things going into it that were obviously helpful. We changed the lineups slightly, but it's also racing people through the course of the year, and knowing where the standard is."

"We told the guys when we went to Princeton for our dual, that we were going to race the number one team in the country, or be the number one team, every time we raced the rest of the season. We had one race there, at Princeton, and then we had the Sprints, and now we have this race. Every one of those races is against the team ranked number one of the country, so you start to really get a sense for where you are. You expose your weaknesses and figure out where you can do better.

"That was something in our favor. We had an opportunity to see what works, what doesn't, and what do we need to do better."

Cal coach Scott Frandsen, who has a trailer full of crews that won their heat and would each be in line to repeat as IRA Champs with a good weekend, said Friday was a good start for his Bears.

"This was a successful first day for us, and it was exciting to line up against all the other crews that we haven't seen yet this year, to see where we stack up on the first day. All of our crews performed well, and they know that we will need to build for the weekend and have better performances at each step."

Racing without the reps did make the first day a bit different this year, admitted Frandsen.

"It brought some stress to Friday for sure," he said. "All of our crews raced well, and without incident. There was nothing that would have impacted the results of a race but it definitely brought in some worst case scenario stress for me, whereas if something happened in past years, you always had the rep to work your way through to the semi final."

We asked Frandsen about whether the prospect of a semi full of crews with fresh legs thanks to the "no rep" format changed anything about the Saturday racing in his mind.

"I don't think it changes all that much. With the training all of these guys across the top 12 programs, or more, have done, those semis were always going to be pretty competitive whether the reps were involved or not."

When it came to how they approached racing without the recourse of a rep today, most of the coaches said they just made sure everything on their boats was extra tight and good to go.

"You check on the equipment a few extra times," said Harvard's Butt.

And Brown's Cooke pointed out that, with three to go in the "no rep" format, qualifying was actually a little smoother.

"There's a little more of a cushion, because if you wind up third, you still go straight through," said Cooke.

Progression Explainer

So, how do you wind up with an IRA "Semi of Death"--which may be a term we'll now need announcer Martin Cross' permission to use? Well, we asked the Commissioner himself, Gary Caldwell.

"There are three different FISA progressions. One puts the winners of Heat 1 and 4 in one semi, and 2 and 3 in the other. Then as you go down through, picking the second place crews and third place crews, there's a swapping that goes on between lane and lane. The second progression is heats 1 and 3 together, and 2 and 4. And the third one is heats 1 and 2, then 3 and 4.

"If we go back to maybe 10 or 12 years ago, we not only had those three, but we would also draw the order of heats out of the hat, and the NCAA still does this. So you would have one randomization of the three semi progressions, and this other randomization of the four heats. So there were 12 possible iterations. The coaches felt like that was just too much and that there ought to be some reward for being the higher seeds. So we settled on just these three and got rid of the machinations of drawing the heat order.

"What you end up with is that, once you get here and start racing, the seeding goes away, and you start racing by where you placed in the heat.

"When the race results go according to the seeding, you end up with a reasonable balance. But then when a number two within a heat beats a number one, or a number three beats a number one, then you wind up with the situation we have now."

So, there you have it: there's always a chance something like this might happen, especially in a year without clear-cut favorites, and the crews will, of course, get to sort it out on the water.

About Those 12 vs 13 Matchups

In our notes on What to Watch For this weekend, we mentioned that there could be tight racing in the three heats that featured the 12 vs 13 seeds, and we actually did see two 13 seeds pull the upset to advance: Stanford's 1V over Cornell, and Penn's 3V over Navy.

For those two 12 seeds, the lack of a second-chance rep was keenly felt, but across the rest of the heats, the seeding held and allowed the faster crews through the year to advance and stay focused on the semis without the worry of having to pull a second 2k on the first day just to get through.

Stanford coach Ted Sobolewski saw his crew go through the rep last year, and was glad the new format opened a path directly to the semi here, even if they did have to go into the day knowing they needed to beat their seed to take the transfer spot away from Cornell.

"As the racing gets tighter, especially among the top 12 or 13 crews, it makes it so that the crews that were going to the rep, the crews that are 9-10-11-12, really didn't have much of a shot in the semi," Sobolewski said. "And then, mentally and emotionally, coming back here in the afternoon and having to row in a race after you're disappointed in the morning, its really tough."

Last year's reps were run on a hot afternoon, so there was an extra toll.

"From a fairness perspective, this is the way to do it," said Sobolewski, "and if there's misadventure, the referees are going to handle it one way or another."

"It had gotten to the point where having reps was really impacting the racing. When you have 8, 9, or even 10 crews who legitimately on any given day could show up at the IRA and make it to the grand final, having even one of those crews go to the rep is a killer and doesn't make for the best racing."

Sobolewski called going into the semis this year without that extra round a "game-changer" and we will see on Saturday just how much it may have changed this for Stanford and the other crews in the semis who got the afternoon off on Friday along with the top seeds.

Lightweights

We have to wait until Sunday for the LWT Men's finals, but Harvard is still rolling. Having missed the IRA bid just two years ago, and then building all the way back to a silver last year, Harvard will look to win its ninth national championship on the final day of this IRA, its first since 2013.

Head H150 coach Billy Boyce talked about his crews mindset, coming into this weekend's racing off of their Sprints win two weeks ago.

"They're trying to make sure nobody flips the script on them. If they want the season to continue the way they want it to, then they need to go out there and be the aggressor. Be active instead of reactive."

"I thought they had a solid piece this morning and got the job done, but the final will be an entirely different race.

"You see a lot of change in the lightweight league from early in the season, to the Sprints and then to the IRA," Boyce added. "Dartmouth is a great example of that. Earlier in the season, they were struggling and then they had a good Sprints, and they had a very strong showing this morning."

"Nothing is ever set in stone in this in this league. You have to continue to execute at the highest level, and the second you take your foot off the gas, someone else will find a way."

The Penn lights, just a length back of Harvard at Sprints, took their delayed heat by the scruff of the neck, and certainly have their foot on the gas as well.

Head coach Colin Farrell said his crew handled the day's hiccup well.

"It was an unfortunate situation and the boat had to get repaired, but they were just focused on what they needed to do," said Farrell. "This isn't the first time we've had situations like this happen, where we get delayed. This happened at the Dodge Cup last year. So it becomes, ok, this is the situation we're in, how do we need to prepare for what we've got to do? They put a plan together for when they wanted to relaunch and got ready to go."

Penn is coming off that silver at Sprints and a Jope Cup win by the whole squad, so we asked Farrell about the key things he focused on with his crews to help them take the next step here at the IRAs.

"This year was especially tricky because it was really short and there wasn't necessarily a ton of time. But for each crew, it was about how did the Sprints go, and where do you feel like you need to keep working to keep picking up speed? Then putting a plan together. We work backwards from the final: what are we trying to do there and then what is the training plan that helps us get there."

Farrell talked about how energized the team and the whole Penn boathouse was by the Jope Cup win, and said the team even got a congratulatory note from the University's President.

"The team cup is a really special thing because everybody has contributed to that and feels the pride of that," he said.

Taking Their Shot In the Fours - FIT

One of the great things about the IRA fours race is that it is the one event open to all IRA member program, so it encompasses the entirety of men's collegiate varsity rowing.

When the dust settled in the semis, the A Final had some of the heavy hitters that will also be duking it out in the eights--Washington, Cal, Brown, and Dartmouth--but both FIT and Colgate struck their blow for the rest of the IRA membership by earning spots in the Grand and a shot at the medals.

For FIT, fresh off being reinstated on the eve of the racing season last spring and still building their program back up, tomorrow's final will be a chance to improve on taking fourth last year and fifth the year before--and they got there by ripping out to an early lead and daring the field to steal the win back from them.

"The big thing was just get out and make everything matter," said FIT coach Adam Thorstad about the plan that earned FIT the win in their semi. "Be aggressive off the line and try to make stuff happen. It was a pretty gutsy piece out there and it's great to see them actually starting to realize some of the potential we know we've got on the squad."

"Obviously, everybody wants to race the eight here," Thorstad added. We fell short of that goal at SIRAs and Dad Vail, our two opportunities to get the eight here. But the guys had a good concentrated effort the last few weeks trying to get the eight a shot, and that carried over in the training for the IRA four. The goal was to try to make the grand final and the see what we can do once we get there. So now it's all about winning the recovery game for tomorrow."

Boatwright Magic

To go back to the Penn Lightweights and the delay in that second heat, the fact that Penn got back out to race at all in their own shell was due to a bit of repair wizardy: when Penn was turning in the warmup area, a passing HWT crew landed a blow on their bow with an oar. It looked at first like Penn might need to start re-rigging their 2V boat so they could race.

That when the boatwrights sprang into action: with the Penn Boatman in Ohio at NCAAs with the women's team, Brown's Ned Foster, Wisconsin's Max Schumitsch, and Yale's Allison Braun came right over and got to work.

Foster, by all reports an extraordinary boatman, led the effort, while Schumitsch lent what he later called "moral support"--and Braun, the Yale boatwright, turned up with a heat gun that really got the repair cooking.

The boat was ready to race in under two hours, and by the time racing ended for the day, Foster had the repair completely done, paint and all, for the Quakers.

Star Power on the Mic

Folks watching the IRA this year may have noticed a pair of new voices on the race call: Olympians Martin Cross and Megan Kalmoe joined the broadcast team this year.

Cross in particular has left a lot of the athletes a bit star-struck, many of whom know his voice very well from his World Rowing and Henley Royal Regatta race commentary for World Rowing. He has become the voice of "big time rowing" for the whole generation of athletes racing here, a few of whom have told their coaches that his presence here is just more proof to them that the IRA is big time rowing, too.

Also big time: Saturday's full morning of racing:

• LWT Women's Heats
• HWT Men's Semis
• HWT & LWT Fours Finals
• and the D-III National Championship to cap it all off

Catch it all here: How to Watch and What to Watch For