Four races, two styles, one result: victory.
On Friday, the Georgetown women’s heavyweight crew team swept the University of North Carolina in all four races of their dual meet, a first for the team. Despite the wins across the board, the team is still showing off-season rust: The varsity-four team easily defeated its opponent with a sloppy yet aggressive style of rowing while the varsity-eight had a slower, more technically sound race.
“Carolina is a program we have traded wins and losses with over the years [but] we can’t use these results yet for anything more than face value,” Head Coach Jimmy King said.
King stressed the newness of the season – the race was Georgetown’s second and North Carolina’s first – and said that later races against common opponents will give the team a better sense of how it stacks up against Carolina and the teams it will be facing later in the season.
Every Georgetown boat won its race by a considerable margin, with the smallest gap only 14 seconds in the novice-eight race. The novice-eight’s time of 7:25.63 defeated North Carolina’s second- and third-place finishing times of 7:39.64 and 8:09.43.
The novice-four team finished in 8:18.24 and defeated the first of two North Carolina teams by 17 seconds and the North Carolina “B” team by 44 seconds.
The varsity-four boat ran what King called, “a very aggressive race,” leaving North Carolina 53 seconds behind at 8:51.40. King said that the win should be viewed cautiously, however.
“[They rowed] at the expense of technique, which was disappointing to see,” King said. Georgetown’s aggressive pace and hefty margin of victory contrasted with the varsity-eight’s steady but unspectacular finish.
The eight team’s time of 6:56.69 was good enough to win the race over North Carolina’s 7:04.87 but failed to capitalize on what King called a “technically sound race.”
Their time was two seconds better than Georgetown’s previous race at the Jesuit Invitational on March 18 in much worse weather conditions.
The eight-team’s technical prowess was encouraging in contrast to the four’s sloppy and aggressive finish but King was not satisfied with their performance.
“[The varsity-eight] should have been more aggressive once gaining an advantage on UNC,” he said.
The women row next on April 1. The lightweight team will face Radcliffe college in Boston and the heavyweight team will meet Columbia, Princeton and Rutgers at Princeton.
The men’s team has not rowed since the Jesuit Invitational and will also row April 1, sending the heavyweight team to Cornell while the lightweight team will compete at the Fosburgh Cup in Princeton, N.J.