In another sign of growth for women's lightweight rowing, the 2007 EAWRC Eastern Sprints will include a women's lightweight 2v event. The Eastern Sprints schools of Wisconsin, Radcliffe, Princeton, and Georgetown all have varsity lightweight programs and should be able to support this event. I would guess that the coaches have been talking about it for a few years and it's nice to see the ECAC respond.
ECAC sources have informed me that there will be no lightweight events at this year's ECAC Regatta. The ECAC has had trouble filling a lightweight field and is understandably hesitant about running match races. It's great to have this information early in the season so lightweight crews can make appropriate plans. Dad Vail has an established lightweight tradition and would be a great venue to bring together all of the Dad Vail and ECAC lightweight boats. The championship becomes more meaningful and the regatta could become an exciting and important stop on the road to IRAs. Should the IRA Regatta find itself in the position of having to turn away entrants, a Dad Vail championship may one day become a price of admission.
Now it's on you, coaches, get Dad Vail on your schedule and let us anticipate great eights racing to go along with the already excellent fours event.
The ECAC has canceled all lightweight events, women's and men's. The men's lightweight event showed only one entry on Regatta Central, but the women had three entries. The ECAC, playing its historical role as Dad Vail spoiler, has left Dad Vail with only three lightweight entries while ECAC was scheduled to have three. If I were Ohio State, Ithaca, and Michigan State, I'd be on the phone to the Dad Vail organizing committee right now asking if I could race. They have the lanes and the race will be run anyway, I'd bet those three crews could get in. The ECAC may not be interested in lightweights, but Dad Vail apparently is. People like to talk about the ECAC's perceived advantages over Dad Vail - course, current, etc. - but one advantage Dad Vail has over ECAC is they actually hold a race! There may be a good reason for canceling these races, but it isn't the number of entries. [Update: See comment for more information on this.] If the ECAC is really a championship regatta, why is it running a third varsity eight race instead of a varsity lightweight eight race - so it can crown the third varsity champion? I don't really care if lightweights race at ECACs or Dad Vails, but they should all race at the same regatta. It does no good to split the entries and then cancel races when there isn't a full field. Despite all the talk of a bad course and poor seedings in Philadelphia, the ECACs started because a group of heavyweight men didn't want to race Temple. Now the heavyweight dog is wagging the lightweight women's tail. Whether Temple belongs in the Dad Vail or not is another discussion, but the irony is that now Temple is beatable by ECAC schools, but they're not racing them. At least ECAC never pretended to hold a lightweight four event so those boats all entered Dad Vail and will actually have a race.
At the ECAC Metros yeaterday, URI showed that it is ready to be taken seriously, winning the lightweight eight by 5 seconds over Marist. Although URI was favored, times tend to compress later in the season and it can be difficult to row from the front. Meanwhile Marist surprised Buffalo, beating them by 15 seconds after having lost to them by a boat length earlier in the season. Marist is clearly picking up speed and should feel good about this result. Buffalo continues to struggle a bit, but still took third place, beating Villanova, St. Joe's, and UMass. St. Joe's at 5th is a bit of a surprise because they had earlier come as close to Georgetown as URI. Two boat races in which the winner isn't pressed can produce unreliable results and that may have been the case with the Georgetown/St. Joe race.
The ECAC Metro Regatta is Saturday and there is a seven boat lightweight eight field. St. Joe's is entered, although I thought they had earlier stopped racing an eight and went to a four. Evidently they found some more lightweights. If this is the same boat that raced before, there should be a tight race for first with URI and St. Joe's expected to be faster than most. Next would come Buffalo and Villanova, followed by Marist, UMass, and Holy Cross. Holy Cross is an unknown so could prove to be fast. Many of these boats have met before so this is an opportunity for payback.
In particular, this is a key race for URI. URI is pulling itself into the ranks of serious lightweight programs, and a win here shows how far they've come and how far they plan to go. St. Joe's and Villanova are boats of opportunity, as is Holy Cross, and you really want to beat those boats. Buffalo had been having a good year until their last race, which just wasn't indicative of their real speed. This is a chance to show what they can do. Marist has been close to Buffalo so they should be able to see a potential upset, and UMass can gain some respect. This is a good field for this regatta and there should be some serious racing.
Meanwhile, Saturday's New England Fours Regatta goes begging with only Holy Cross entered in the lightweight event. No other lightweight fours in New England? Perhaps they're all put into eights for the ECAC Metro.
At the Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Crew Championships there is a five boat lightweight four race including Virginia Tech, Penn State, Susquehanna, Carnegie Mellon, and Virginia Commonwealth. I'm not sure we've seen all of these boats race before, but I would think CMU would be the favorite in this race.
MACRAs also take place Saturday. Marietta used to be to MACRAs what Wisconsin is to the Midwest Championships - hosts and dominators. This year, though, it looks like there are only Marietta fours and a pair entered. No reason to care about that here because they're not lightweights, but times have changed. The light eight race at MACRAs is a two boat race between Grand Valley and Ohio State. This is actually listed as a JV/Lightweight race (I hate that) so GV may be a heavy boat. The light four race has Northwestern, Ohio, Ohio State, Grand Valley, and Michigan State. This is a good race with some natural rivalries - OSU and Ohio and Michigan State and Grand Valley - and Northwestern looking for revenge over Grand Valley to whom it previously lost by about 3 seconds. I think OSU should be strong here, but if the four is coming out of the eight it could be a tough race for the Buckeyes since the eight is only about an hour earlier.
Reading over the ECAC announcement that Princeton won the Boathouse Sports Trophy, I noticed that Princeton's lightweights weren't even mentioned when the school's results were discussed. It's as if they don't exist. This led me to look at the results for Eastern Sprints last spring. Lightweights don't count in scoring for the Willing Points Trophy. Novice fours count, for goodness sake! I don't know if lightweights count for the men, but I'll guess they do since they were listed in Princeton's results in the ECAC announcement. What's up with this?
