On Sunday, October 25, the Cornell men's heavyweight rowing team journeyed to Princeton to participate in the Princeton Chase. The Princeton Chase is a head race between many of the top Eastern Sprints schools. It is the first race of the year that the entire team attends and it is a great opportunity to discover the depth of the team and see where we stand in relation to our league opponents. Its a great opportunity to see how much improvement the team needs to make over the winter in order to win in the spring.

We left Ithaca at 4 a.m., on Sunday eager to see how we stacked up. Coach Kennett has implemented a new training plan this fall and everyone has had large gains in fitness and strength. Additionally, we have been working with Assistant Director of Athletics for Athletic Performance, Tom Howley, who through working closely with Coach Kennett has sought to maximize our improvement in the weight room. Still, despite our confidence in the strides we had made over the first eight weeks of the season, the team was unsure of how we compared to other teams.

The first race of the day was in the varsity-8. The Cornell boats started in fourth, 21st, and 38th position. The first varsity-8, which returned only three rowers from last year's boat, which placed fourth at the Eastern Sprints, was looking to rebound from an uninspiring result at the Head of the Charles. The team has quite a few athletes who are of similar ability levels, so Coach Kennett shuffled the lineup before the Princeton Chase, placing senior Dan Hutchison and sophomore DJ Vaglia into the boat. Starting directly ahead of rival Syracuse, the boat got off to a great start. Through the 2,000-meter straightaway that starts the head race course at Princeton, the varsity was in fourth place and had begun to push away the Orange. Stroked by junior Colin Smith, the only sophomore in the first varsity-8 last year, the boat rowed at a 34-stroke rating and was able to finish within nine seconds of Princeton, which won the race. The boat was able to finish well ahead of Navy, which had beaten them the week before at the Head of the Charles.

The second varsity-8 started directly behind Columbia's second varsity-8 and was stroked by senior Reid Pauly. Exhorted on by junior coxswain Corri Levine, the boat used the first 2,000 meters of the race to chase down Columbia. Unfortunately, they were not able to pass the Lions during the straightaway and were forced to sit in Columbia's wake around the sweeping 750-meter, 110 degree turn, which is the trademark of the Princeton course. With its rhythm disrupted by the wake from the Columbia shell, the Cornell boat struggled in the second half of the race. Still, the boat was able to finish 11th overall, beating several teams' first varsity boats.

I was in the third varsity-8 and we started 38th, directly behind Princeton's third varsity-8 boat. Our boat struggled during the first 500 meters, but sophomore Natalie Little, our coxswain, was able to relax the boat into its rhythm. Over the next 1,500 meters, following the stroke of junior Darragh Brady, the boat moved up to even with Princeton. Realizing that the turn was approaching and that we needed to pass Princeton in order to gain the inside of the turn, Little called for a power move to cut in front of the Tigers. The boat responded and we pulled ahead just before the turn. Since we were on the inside of the turn, we were able to substantially cut down on the total distance that we had to row. Soon after passing Princeton, we were able to use the momentum we had gained to also pass Holy Cross. After completing the turn, we brought up the stroke rating and powered through to the finish line. We ended up finishing 16th, which was the top finish by a third varsity-8. We were able to finish ahead of a strong second varsity-8 from Yale, and in front of the first varsity-8 of MIT and Penn.

After landing the boats, we quickly put them into slings and launched our fours. We row eights in the spring, but in the fall we also race fours. We had only chosen our lineups for the fours on Thursday, so we were eager to see how they would perform after limited practice time. My four, made up of junior Nick Catalana, sophomore Brian Searle, junior Darragh Brady, senior lightweight coxswain Kerry Quinn, and myself, was particularly excited to race. Kerry, having coxed the United States lightweight-8 to a second place finish at Senior Worlds, was able to vastly improve our rhythm, despite having never coxed us before. We started the race in 49th (out of 50) position but we were confident that we would be able to improve on our starting position. We started strong and quickly came up to Penn, which had started directly ahead of us. Kerry, thinking quickly, executed a sharp turn to pull us to the inside before the turn. On the turn at the Princeton Chase, the coxswains live by the motto of "there is no such thing as too close" and Kerry took this to an extreme. The starboard blades were just feet from shore for the duration of the turn, and at one point we had to duck in order to avoid getting swiped by an overhanging tree. This expert coxing allowed us to gain substantial ground on Georgetown, which had started two places ahead of us. Coming out of the turn, we had pulled level with Georgetown and through the last 1,000 meters of the race we were able to gain a substantial margin over them.

After finishing our race, we derigged our boats, greeted our parents, and ran to the bridge to watch the freshmen race. After practicing with the freshmen for eight weeks, everyone was interested to see how they would do in their first race. Rowing two even boats in a competition where every other school was in stacked lineups, the freshmen finished eighth and ninth, with just two seconds separating the two boats.

Overall, last weekend was very informative. The team learned that we are within striking distance of the top programs in the league. However, we will have to work hard over the winter in order to catch these crews. The team is enthused by the result and are redoubling its efforts to improve. We have one more race, this weekend at Syracuse, and then we go into our Ivy League mandated 49-day period, where we only practice six hours per week with our coaches. This period will be critical if the team is going to perform in the spring and everyone is ready to do the work necessary.