IRA Entry List

The IRA entry list is out and there's a strong 12 boat field in the lightweight eight event. Last year saw only 10 boats compete for the National Championship. This is only the second year since 1997 that there is a 12 boat field (2004 is the other). San Diego State and Marist drop out from last year, while Bucknell, Dayton, MIT,and URI join. While it's never good to see boats drop, these are great additions. Given my previous post, I'm obviously happy to see Bucknell racing. Dayton deserves to finally make it to the big show after two years of excellent results. I say finally only because they could have been there last year but missed it. It's good to see MIT back in the hunt. MIT is a traditional lightweight program with a lot of history and URI is an up and coming program that is in the midst of a pretty good season.

It's worth noting that the women have the same number of entries as the lightweight men. In fairness, I think the entries are limited to 12 in these events, although there have been years (2004 for one) when the men had less than twelve.

By the way, it's fascinating to look at the old results. As an example, here were the final standings in 1997:

1) Radcliffe
2) Villanova
3) Wisconsin A
4) UMass
5) George Washington
6) LaSalle
7) Seattle Pacific
8) Wisconsin B
9) Humboldt

Princeton didn't even have a lightweight program. In 1998 Villanova won the National Championship by beating Radcliffe by about half a second. Think of some of these schools that no longer race lightweights - have they ever found themselves on the national stage since? Many of them moved on to middling heavyweight obscurity when perhaps they could have become lightweight powerhouses. Who knows?