Four more conference championships wrapped on Saturday, with Northeastern, Oregon State, Rhode Island, and #1 ranked Stanford all winning bids to the NCAA D1 Championship.

Northeastern claimed their 11th CAA title in a row, Rhode Island collected an eleventh title overall in the A-10, and both Oregon State and Stanford won the new championships they raced in this year after the conference realignment: Oregon State in the WCC, and Stanford in the ACC.

row2k caught up with Rhode Island and Northeastern at the Cooper, and a full round up of all the AQ results and D1 conference championships is available here in row2k's NCAA coverage.

A-10 AQ: Rhode Island

Rhode Island bounced back from a tough weekend at the Women's Sprints two weeks ago to win both eights at the A-10s and lock up a return trip to the NCAAs. The title is Rhode Island's eleventh overall and will be their second appearance in a row at the NCAAs representing the A-10.

In the early finals, UMass won the Varsity Four with George Washington in second and Rhode Island in third, but the gold medal rows by Rhody's 1V and 2V eight sealed the team bid ahead of George Washington.

URI 1V Eight

Head Coach Shelagh Donohoe was please to see her team come through today with the NCAA bid on the line.

"This year has been up and down, and we have a young crew and there's been a lot of inconsistencies, but I knew they put the work in," Donohoe said. "They have trained really hard, so I knew they had it, and they really showed up today."

"It's a legacy here," she said, of team's approach to the championship. "This is our 11th, so they come here believing they can get it done, and they do it, more often than not.

"But we've also had real tough competition, and that competition has helped," Donohoe added. "It has pushed us to be faster. So hopefully we can go on to NCAAs and do better for the A-10 than we have in the past. That's the goal."

Rhode Island's senior captain, Hailey Pardi, also talked about the team's sense of their legacy at the A-10s.

"Looking at our past, there's so many of strong woman behind us who showed us we can do it," Pardi said. "For myself, to lead a team with back to back wins, I couldn't be happier with them because I think it just shows them they can do it, no matter who's on the team and no matter what boat they're in."

That belief was part of the race today for Pardi in the 1V eight.

"At the start line, we were saying, 'start out, take those first couple of strokes, and then you own it. This is our A-10 and it's our course,' so it was very special."

Donohoe called the way the conference has been tightening up "wonderful" because it pushes all the teams to get faster.

"There's a lot of fast conferences out there, and I think any time we can push to get a second or two into the other conferences, that's a positive for our conference as well."

CAA AQ: Northeastern

Northeastern with their 11th NCAA ticket

Northeastern defended their CAA title, and run of NCAA appearances, with wins in both varsity eights as well. The Husky 1V won over a Delaware eight that matched their best finish since 2009, and the 2V finished ahead of Drexel. Drexel did collect a gold in one NCAA event, winning the varsity four final, where Northeastern's four finished second.

With the conference crown back in hand, Northeastern heads back to the NCAAs for the eleventh time.

"They started preparing for this conference championship last June," said head coach Joe Wilhelm. "They went home and a lot of them rowed over the summer, some of them rowed on their U23 teams.

"It really is a continuation of one year after the other, and they know that if they take the summer off, they're going to be behind when they come back in the fall."

The CAA is another league that getting tighter, and the podium featured fresh faces alongside Northeastern and Drexel this year, with Delaware's 1V silver and Villanova getting back into the medals with a bronze in the 2V.

Northeastern 1V Eight

"It's a different mix every year, and in different phases of the season, too," Wilhelm said. "I thought Drexel did a really great job towards the end of the year. They found some speed at the end of the year that they didn't have earlier and San Diego was strong. Delaware's Varsity was very strong, and they just got faster as the year went along, too.

"So the faces change, but the push from them is always there."

The Husky crews handled those challenges by focusing on executing the best race they could, according to 1V coxswain Camille Arnold-Mages.

"Our boat had a very good warm up going in, so we felt pretty good and we executed the race just how we talked about it yesterday," she said. "We wanted more sharp blades, back towards bow, and to really nail the start. That sorted itself out pretty well, and after we shifted and started pivoting more into the catch, we really started to move."

The senior coxswain will be racing in her fourth NCAA Championship with the Northeastern 1V and she talked about how the team will handle the next two weeks to get ready.

The Northeastern senior class

"We'll relax the rest of today and tomorrow," she said, "and then once we get to the boathouse on Monday, it's 'Go' time for NCAAs."

ACC AQ: Stanford

At the ACC Championship, Stanford made the most of their inaugural season in the conference, winning all three NCAA events as part of a Cardinal sweep that also included wins in the 2V4 and 3V8.

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Stanford, ranked #1 in the latest Pocock CRCA poll, set championships records in all five events according to the ACC and became the first team to sweep every final since Virginia in 2021.

Virginia, the #13 team in the polls, took second overall in the team standings, with #11 Syracuse in third and #9 Cal in fourth.

WCC AQ: Oregon State

Oregon State joined the WCC as an affiliate member this year, and won all four events to claim the conference's NCAA bid, snapping Gonzaga's nine year streak as WCC champion. The Zags finished second as a team, ahead of the other newcomer to the conference, Washington State.

Oregon State, polling at #20, will head back to NCAAs for the first time since 2022, and the WCC title is the first-ever conference title for the Beavers.

Oregon State celebrating the program's first conference win

Championship racing for the remaining 4 AQ spots continues on Sunday with the Big Ten, Big 12, Ivy League and MAAC Championships. Check row2k for results, links to the live video coverage, and follow along with the D1 NCAA AQ Tracker here.