This truly massive weekend of collegiate championships got off to faster start than usual, with four teams sealing up their Automatic Qualifications with conference titles before we even got out of Friday.
Three of those Championships shared a venue in Saratoga Springs, where Jacksonville had their MAAC title sewn up by 9:28 am or so, followed quickly by Northeastern in the CAA, and then George Washington's emphatic march to their first NCAA team bid ever in the A-10 Finals. Then Navy claimed the last of Friday's bids in the Patriot League racing on Lake Quinsigamond, winning out over BU in the tie-breaker they claimed with the Varsity Eight's victory.
The other seven D1 AQs will be settled this weekend, on Saturday for the ACC and WCC titles, and on Sunday when the American, Big 10, Big 12, Ivies, and Pac-12 hold their championships. You can follow all of that action with results and live video throughout the weekend.
Here's the Friday round-up:
Jacksonville Unwraps 7th Ticket to Big Dance
Jacksonville opened the day by winning its seventh MAAC title in the past nine years with a clean sweep. The Dolphins, whose head coach Mike Lane has called this mid-May Championship season "Rowing Christmas," became the first school to qualify for a 2023 NCAA D1 bid when their regatta went to straight, seven boat finals this year--and allowed the MAAC to wrap up its racing early in Saratoga Springs.
The Dolphins swept the MAAC Championships en route to their second consecutive, and seventh overall, conference championship!
- Jacksonville Women's Rowing (@JAX_WROW) May 12, 2023
See you soon, New Jersey!https://t.co/3JMM89rEch
Jacksonville's team will be returning to NCAAs for the second year in a row, but the new format, and location, of this year's event provided some unknowns up front.
"We didn't really know what to expect coming into today," Lane said afterwards, "because this went from a race where we normally have heats and finals, to a seven boat final about eight days ago.
"That just added a little bit more pressure for the kids and for the coaches as a whole: knowing that we can't make any mistakes, and that we had to get out there and get after it. That added a new element for us, and coupled with the fact that we were racing in Saratoga, which we've never been to before, there were a lot of unknowns for us coming into this regatta.
"We did absolutely everything we needed to do and we were capable of doing," said Lane about sweeping to the conference title. "And I think the margins, especially in our 2V and our Four were outstanding because, at the end of the day, our goal is to go to NCAAs and beat some teams, so we're well on our way there.
"Our goal is to really do something special at NCAAs, and for us that would to have one of our boats beat a boat in each of the each of the three events--the Four, the 2V, and the 1V--and if we can do that, that'd be historic for our program and for the conference."
Looking ahead to this seventh NCAA appearance, Lane reflected on how the AQ era has proved transformative for his program and other Automatic Qualifiers who now get a chance to be a part of the NCAA Championship regularly:
"When I started at JU, we were a combined 90 seconds behind the next crew in our first NCAA finals, if you added up the margins in those three events. Now we're at the point now where we've had a boat beat a boat at NCAAs, when our Four beat BU last year. So this year, it's our goal to get our Four, our 2V and our 1V past a team or two. The AQ has really helped to raise the level of competition within our conference as a whole, and nationally as well, and that's exciting.
"NCAAs is not just a bonus trip for us: this is a business trip, and we're going up to Cherry Hill to do something special," said Lane.
Northeastern Sweeps to Keep CAA Crown
Northeastern swept their racing as well, but Head Coach Joe Wilhelm knew beforehand that nothing was a given this year, not after what he had seen from Drexel so far this year--or after last year's title came down to a tie with Drexel, after the Dragon's won the 2V event and even led the 1V8 race for a spell.
"They've had a great season," Wilhelm said of Drexel, once his team had secured this ninth title in a row. "They've have a lot of wins under their belts and when you get used to winning, that's a good thing. We saw Drexel at the Women's Sprints, and even though, in a couple of events, we were in the grand final and they were the petite, their times were the same or faster than ours, so we knew that this was this was going to be a tight regatta."
The racing did indeed start out tight, with Northeastern winning the first team-scoring event--the Four--by just 0.78 seconds over Drexel, but Northeastern earned increasingly bigger margins as the finals progressed--two seconds in the 2V8 and seven seconds in the 1V8--to put paid to the title. The Huskies remain the only team still in the conference to have represented the CAA at NCAAs, but it once again took strong racing across all three events of Drexel to get it done.
"You go into the regatta and you know that if you hit on all cylinders and you execute the way that you should, you're in a good position, but you still have to show up on race day and do it," Wilhelm said. "You know that there are other schools in the conference that are really strong and that are that are not going to let you make a mistake.
"A lot of people ask me how we make it look easy, and my response to them is, you know, rowing...it's not easy. The team works incredibly hard every day to be able to perform like this on race day. This year, because we had a really deep team, there have been a lot of challenges, a lot of things we've had to do to get us to this point. We had a number of changes between Sprints and now, just to get everyone in the right seats. But it's a great team: a very deep team and a very talented team, and we needed that right from the Four on down today.
"We really embrace the fact that we have a tough regular season schedule: it gets us ready for races like this and it has prepared us to take the next step. Every week we've been able to learn a little bit about ourselves and get a little bit faster, so I think it's business as usual, honestly, [for the next few weeks]: What did we do the last two weeks to get from Sprints to here and then what do we do these next two weeks? It's really not any different."
GW Makes History with A-10 Victory
The 2023 NCAA D1 Championship will have at least one full set of fresh faces as the George Washington Women broke through to win the A-10 title. They did it on the strength of their eights, both of which posted open water wins over Rhode Island, the A-10's representative at the last five NCAA Championships. With the GW Four holding serve with a third place finish behind URI and Duquesne, the Colonials had enough points in hand at the end of the day to claim the school's first A-10 team title and NCAA team bid.
May we present, the 2023 #A10ROW #A10Champs@GW_WomensRowing
- Atlantic10Conference (@atlantic10) May 12, 2023
STORY: https://t.co/hO0ym0uTRU pic.twitter.com/hhF1VWCyPT
"GW had a boat go to NCAAs, a Varsity Eight, back in 1998," said Head Coach Marci Robles, "but to be able to take the whole team now is just incredible."
"This is something that's been on our radar, and we've come close before. In my first year, we came in second, and the possibility [of winning] became real. Each year after that, it got a little bit closer and a little bit closer, and the team really showed up today.
"The Four had a lot of changes fairly recently," said Robles, "and watching them exceed their expectations in that final was a really good start to the afternoon. The 2V, we felt pretty good about and I think they felt pretty confident that they could take advantage of the opportunity on front of them."
As for her varsity, Robles said they "exceeded every expectation."
"Rhode Island is an incredible competitor, they've won the last five in a row, so we knew the battle would be a tough one."
Just a year ago, GW made some noise at A-10s by winning the 2V8 outright, but could not close the deal in the Varsity Eight. We asked Robles whether that 2V gold played any role as a catalyst for the results today.
"It absolutely did; it gave us something that we talked about but hadn't experienced yet--winning at A-10s--and made it more real. That experience that the 2V had, the team certainly talked about a lot this year, and used it as fuel and motivation to push each other day in and day out."
"Everyone's excited to be able to focus on rowing," said Robles about the next two weeks, "and to continue to do what we've done every day. They certainly executed this afternoon, and we just need to continue to be present for the next two weeks and to keep driving."
Navy Reclaims Patriot League Title
Navy emerged to win the Patriot League bid, in a conference championship that was run in and amongst the events of the NIRC as the two regattas shared the Lake Quinsigamond venue in Worcester.
After an early points lead by 2021 Patriot champ Boston University, on the strength of a close win in the four and a big margin in the 2V8 over Navy in second place, the Navy Varsity Eight used a come-from-behind charge to take a win and the tie-breaker in the final stanza of the last race. It was a return to form by the Navy squad, which saw a run of six straight league titles and NCAA appearances come to an end in 2021 when BU won the team bid and Bucknell won the varsity 8.
"Coming in, we knew it was going to be an absolute battle with BU from everything that we had seen from them this year," said Navy Head Coach Joe Schlosberg, "and that it was going to take a big effort, with everyone contributing towards that to get the points we needed.
"Those were some tough finals, and we got very lucky that our Four and Second Eight finished second. They had they had some people charging down on them, and they very easily could have slid into third. If they had, we wouldn't be in the position we're in right now. In terms of the 1V8, they were down for two-thirds of the race, pulled level late, and at some point found another gear and just took off. It was just awesome: very, very memorable."
The work to get to this eighth overall NCAA appearance did not come easily, according to Schlosberg, so perhaps the last minute heroics to pull off the 1V8 win and the tiebreaker over BU for the team points were fitting:
"The team had some attrition this year, to start things off," said Schlosberg. "It was a hard start, because some people didn't like how last year ended, and didn't want to come back and put in the work needed to get back into this position. That made for a hard year and I think we really maximized what we had with this group, and it's going to mean a whole lot moving forward, as we build off of this momentum. The group that stuck around, they targeted this championship and made it what they wanted to chase."
The dominance in the 10 years of the AQ era by Navy (8 titles) and BU (2 titles) belies the fact that the league is getting deeper, and harder to win.
"The last couple of years, the league has gotten better," said Schlosberg, "and we are all trying to improve our speed to be more of a contender nationally. Everyone in this league is trying to push for that, and it takes some time."
Here's To That Winning Feeling
That winning feeling! ?????? pic.twitter.com/uxfiZxuvN7
- GW Women's Rowing (@GW_WomensRowing) May 12, 2023
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