If you put any stock in regular season results, which is certainly the point of all the racing to date, the varsity eight was really anyone's race. Let's see if I can remember everything: Columbia beat Yale early in the year, then Brown beat Harvard-Radcliffe; then Princeton beat Columbia, but next Harvard beat Princeton. The next week Princeton beat Yale by nine seconds, but seven days later, Yale beat Harvard, and then Columbia beat Brown. And I'm sure there was some other result in that short six weeks that I missed here that would only further confused things.
The times in the heats didn't help matters much, although Princeton did distinguish themselves by posting the fastest time by a fair amount – but few seasoned race watchers count on morning heat times to predict afternoon medals dock arrivals.
The fact that the Ivy coaches had decided to choose their NCAA automatic qualifier based on the outcome of the varsity eight added an edge on the proceedings; the group made this choice to ensure that the league's fastest eight ended up at the NCAA championship each year. Although in the end on this day the points winner was also the V8 winner, already at least a couple conference varsity eight champions are not likely to attend the NCAAs, as the AQ went to the points winner, so for a league that tends to have very competitive V8, it is a valid choice.
In the end, Princeton took the V8 final under control early and never really let up, pushing out to clear water at some point in the first 1000, and ultimately out to almost a length of open water at the finish line to take the Ivy Championship and NCAA bid. The field sorted out behind them once again in unpredictable fashion, with Yale's late season improvements proving to be very solid as they rowed into silver clear water ahead of everyone else, following by Harvard-Radcliffe for the bronze, then Cornell, Columbia and Brown.
"It was a strong field in the varsity eight, and demonstrates the speed in our league," said Princeton coach Lori Dauphiny. "It was definitely one of the most confusing years in terms of polling. So we knew going into the championship it was going to be close and competitive field. We talked about it and discussed that it was a whole new ball game. We would have to have our best race."
Even after the big time spread in the heats, Dauphiny said that the crew did not assume the championship was won. "There was no risk of us taking it for granted," she said. "I think the conditions changed, and we knew the league was close. You never know what will happen, but I knew they could race."
Second Varsity Eight
Coming into the championship ranked fourth, Brown worked some of their championship season magic in the 2v, holding off a late-race challenge from Radcliffe to take gold; with Radcliffe in silver medal position, the previously undefeated Princeton crew had to settle for bronze.
After the racing, Brown coach John Murphy said he was optimistic about the crew's chances despite having lost the heats to Princeton in the morning.
"It's a very young team, with only one senior in the varsity and one senior in the second varsity," he said. "We have had a lot of moving around in the boats, and they have only been together in this lineup a week, so maybe they are starting to come into their own. This morning they got rowed through by Princeton in the heat, but they thought they had a good, strong row, and they felt pretty good. I'm always optimistic, so I was hoping they could do it, and it was great to see it."
In the sometimes-tradition of having the coxswain row away from the medals dock, while an oarsperson crams into the coxswain seat, the Brown cox offered some entertainment by getting into her seat with the oar behind her; she had to climb out and get back in as her crewmates teased and giggled.
Also notable from the Brown crews are their new Bear unis; years ago, a Brown women's crew painted their bow like a bear, and the hull (well, with the crews in it, but you get the idea) went on to win heaps of races. Subsequently Brown started painting all their bows the same way, and now have moved the bear onto the uni.
Fours
Brown's fours flotilla swept the fours event –their A four, B four, and C four all won their events by open water, wow. Assistant coach Catherine Starr, who coaches the fours along with Phoebe Murphy, said that the fours race each other considerably at home, and push each other throughout the year.
"The stroke (of the A four) is a freshman walk-on, and has done a really great job there all year," Starr said. Asked whether the B four can ever take the A four, Starr said "maybe if we did four pieces, and the A four went really hard for the first three, the B four might be able to take one." All the internal competition has kept the crews on their best game. "They always think they have to race for everything that they get, we keep them racing all the time making sure they never settle for anything."
Even the C four can nick a piece now and then; "they put up some good fights racing the other fours, for certain," Starr said.
Third Varsity Eight
The Princeton 3V took gold with a 13-second margin today, completing an undefeated season in which they never finished a race with overlap with another crew – except maybe back home. Similar to Start, coach Steve Coppola credits racing their teammates back home with the crew's ability to perform out on the racecourse against other opponents. Asked if an undefeated 3V might be vulnerable to resting on their regular season laurels come championship day, Coppola noted that "it's always a concern, you can't let them get too comfortable, you always have to have that monkey on your back. They were able to do that by racing everyone else in our boathouse, and making sure everyone else took them to task to every second they could racing each other. It really kept a nice edge on it."
The crew is made up of "mostly sophomores with a couple freshmen, and a couple juniors in there kind of teaching them the ropes," Coppola said. "It has been a great developmental season for them, they've learned a lot about racing."
Medal Count, Team Points, Conditions
In the end, all the gold medals went to Princeton and Brown, but the points race was more complicated than that, if only slightly; here is the final medal tally:
Princeton: five medals: two gold, three bronze
Radcliffe: five medals: two silver, three bronze
Brown: Four medals: four gold
Yale: Two medals: two silver
Penn: one silver
Cornell: one silver
When everything was tallied up, Princeton won the overall team points ahead of Radcliffe
Final Team Points
1. Princeton, 81
2. Radcliffe, 74
3. Brown, 68
4. Cornell, 55
5. Yale, 54
6. Columbia, 41
7. Penn, 25
8. Dartmouth, 22
Unfortunately, winds were certainly an issue at the championship; on the Cooper, the unsolvable puzzle of a cross headwind from lane 6 came into play today – unsolvable because the straightforward and fair solution of seeding simply from lane 6 to 1 is not automatically a desirable option on the Cooper due to well-known issues with Lane 6 caused by very shallow water in some critical sections of the racecourse. The lanes were reseeded eventually, but only just before the varsity eight final, the last race of the day. The course is slated to be dredged and widened, as I understand it, which could solve the problem; I'll look into this more once the urgency of covering the racing season abates a bit.
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05/22/2013 3:41:38 PM
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