Quick Dad Vail Update

Light four boats moving on:
Heat 1 - Pitt, George Mason, Purdue
Heat 2 - CMU, Georgia, Toronto
Heat 3 - Lawrence, Duquesne, Northwestern
Heat 4 - Brock, UConn, Iona

The heats seemed to have been pretty fair, and the only mild surprises were Ohio State and Lafayette. OSU must be saving it all for the eight and Lafayette, while not necessarily one of the strongest boats entered, had been improving and no doubt had some hopes of making the final. This is a very fast field, however, so it wasn't going to be easy.

Light eight boats moving on:
Heat 1 - Long Beach State, Ohio State, Buffalo
Heat 2 - Lehigh, UMass, Penn State

Virginia Tech drew the short end of the stick here, as their heat 1 time would have won heat 2. This sort of thing happens every year here, but I'm not sure there is a solution for it. It's tough luck for the Hokies, who probably deserve to be in the final.

A final note here, in the preview I inexplicably noted the wrong margin for LBS vs LMU, which led me to view OSU as the favorite, rather than Long Beach State. LBS did have the fastest qualifying time, but in heats like this those times can mean very little. In this case, I suspect a lot of boats were able to do some cruising, so we'll see quite a bit more speed and intensity tomorrow.