The Georgetown University men’s and women’s rowing teams will travel to Princeton, N.J., this weekend to compete in the Princeton Chase, just a week after their low finishes at the Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston, Mass., last weekend.

The Georgetown men’s heavyweight team placed 24th out of a 36-crew pool in its Championship Eight race at the Head of the Charles. Meanwhile, the men’s lightweight team placed 15th in its 17-crew pool.

“I was happy with the overall approach,” Men’s Head Coach Luke Agnini said. “They [the heavyweight team] had an aggressive race. They fell off in the third quarter and that’s where they lost about eight places, so that was the disappointing part. They were in a good spot halfway through — next checkpoint, they tapered off and it was just enough to where six or seven seconds meant six or seven spots.”

Adjusting its performance in the third quarter of the race has been Georgetown’s main focus during practice this week. Awareness in the boat is also key to race success, as Agnini noted.

“There’s not much to fix in one week — you can’t make people too much fitter, however you can make them aware,” Agnini said. “I think awareness is a big thing with these guys, especially since there’s no coach in the water. It’s not just awareness about rowing and the speed of the boat but awareness about their own confidence and what they’re capable of doing,” Agnini said.

Though the Princeton Chase presents similar pools of teams every year, strategy tends to vary based off of the current progress of Georgetown’s teams and their own competitive nature this early in the season. However, possessing a high level of enthusiasm is a constant necessity.

“Enthusiasm is always the same. … Why back off the gas pedal when so much preparation and time has been devoted to that goal?” junior heavyweight rower Graham Miller said. “Strategy definitely changes. Our skill level and endurance is getting better so that enables us to have different moves, have different calls and different capabilities during the race course.”

The Georgetown women’s rowing team will also compete in the Princeton Chase at Lake Carnegie on Sunday. Reviewing both the openweight and lightweight teams’ strengths and weaknesses during the Head of the Charles has assisted in their preparation in practice. At the Head of the Charles, the openweight team placed 24th in a 34-crew race. In the Lightweight Fours race, the Hoyas placed ninth out of 13 boats.

“I really liked how we rowed, I think we rowed with length and aggression which was our goal,” Women’s Head Coach Miranda Paris said. “I thought we were extremely aggressive in the second half of the race. Our goal for this upcoming race is to maintain that aggression in the second half to see if we can up the boat speed for this coming weekend,” Paris said.

Implementing the Hoyas’ second-half aggression into the first-half of the race has been one of their main focuses in practice. As the team raced very tightly with high-level teams in the second half of the Head of the Charles, they see a greater degree of aggression in the first half as a medium of overtaking some of those boats in later stages of the course.

“Based off of our Head of the Charles race, we’re trying to really get after it in the first half, so I think that’s something that we’re looking to execute well,” senior openweight rower Keara Schmeiser said.

As Georgetown’s rowing program is in the Patriot League, elite teams including Brown and host-school Princeton will be Georgetown’s main competitors. Meeting with Princeton boats every year has crafted a history between the two teams, and senior lightweight rower Sarah Arcos sees that trend being perpetuated even more in this race.

“With Princeton, we’ve kind of over the years gone back and forth a little bit with who’s faster, and last year they beat us, so I think this year we’re going to try to come back on them and have a few wins,” Arcos said.

This race holds a special significance for Georgetown’s freshmen rowers, as this will be their debut on the college scene. Though some of them raced in the Head of the Potomac Regatta in late September, the Princeton Chase represents a real beginning to their competitive collegiate rowing career. There will be three walk-on rowers on the men’s teams competing in the race.

“That is definitely baptism by fire,” Agnini said. “That’s when you sort of just cross yourself and hope everyone else makes it back.”