After Hurricane Isabel drowned all hopes of racing in the Head of the Potomac, Georgetown’s crew teams have waited since late September to finally dip their oars in actual competition. This weekend, both the women’s varsity lightweight team and the men’s novice team took to the water to compete in their first regattas of the season.

The novice men’s team traveled to nearby Fairfax, Va., to compete in the Occoquan Challenge, which takes place on the Occoquan Reservoir. As it is the fall season, the teams compete in head races, which are longer than the sprint races of the spring and involve courses with twists and turns rather than the straightaways common to sprints. This particular regatta featured a three-mile course which the boats fielded by Georgetown navigated well. In the novice men’s four race, the Hoyas competed in three boats. The “A” boat swept to victory in 16:13.00, outpacing its nearest competitor, the Georgetown “B” boat, by six seconds. The “C” boat finished fourth in the eight boat field with a time of 17:51.00, sixteen seconds behind third place Duke University.

In the second race, the men’s novice eight, the Hoyas did equally well. The Hoyas accounted for six of the 17 competitors in the race. The “A” squad stroked to victory in 14 minutes and 59 second, while the “D” squad took the runners-up spot with a 15:30.00 showing, five seconds ahead of third place University of North Carolina. The other four boats captured the fourth, sixth, eighth and 12th positions.

On the women’s side, the varsity lightweights made an appearance in Philadelphia on the Schuylkill River, America’s most distinguished river for rowing, immortalized in Thomas Eakin’s paintings. Unfortunately, it was also the sight of more than a few mishaps for the Hoyas.

“A lot of things went wrong for us. In one of the fours, the speakers broke and we couldn’t hear the coxswain. In the other four, the oar broke and they couldn’t race,” said women’s lightweight crew captain, senior Allison Dryer.

This past Saturday, this portion of the team competed in the Navy Day Regatta, a 2.5 mile head race. The team competed in two events: the women’s college fours and the women’s lightweight eights. In the race between eights, Georgetown paired off against St. Joseph’s (Pa.), a hometown team familiar with the river. St. Joseph’s got the best of Georgetown in the competition, besting the visiting team by 36 seconds. The Hoyas’ boat recorded a time of 15:48.8 for the course. In the women’s four race, Georgetown fielded two boats. Georgetown’s “A” boat finished fifth out of 13 boats with a time of 16:50.1, 1.5 seconds behind the fourth place University of Pennsylvania’s “C” boat and just under 43 three seconds behind the winner, Pennsylvania’s “A” boat. The Hoyas’ second boat did not fare so well; one the competitor’s oars broke 10 strokes into the race, preventing the team from ever finishing.

“It was just a chance to give everyone some experience. We were not in our designated positions and we just threw the boats together, so these were not a typical result for us. It was about trying different things,” Dryer said.

Georgetown crew participates in its largest meet of the fall when both the men’s and women’s teams send their best rowers to Boston for the prestigious Head of the Charles, a 3 mile head race along the Charles River that is one of the most heavily participated in and mostly highly witnessed sport’s competitions in America, an all-day affair and colorful pageant that adds some extra hues to Massachusetts in autumn and takes over Boston’s riverbanks. But to Dryer, it is less about the spectacle and more about the competition on the water.

“Next week we’ll put everyone in their designated spot. It’s much more serious. This last regatta was pretty small, but this race will be much more important. We want to go with the best team possible.”