In the midst of a successful 2006 season, the Georgetown University women’s crew team came up short against Navy and Princeton this past weekend. The Hoyas posted no first place finishes in any of the 2,000-meter races against their east coast rivals but did have some promising results.
On Saturday, Georgetown’s lightweight team headed to New Jersey to battle the Princeton Tigers. While the Hoyas finished third in the varsity four race and runner-up in the frosh/novice eight, the varsity eight squad gave Princeton’s varsity boat all they could handle, trailing the Tigers by half a boat-length.
The heavyweight squad was in action on Sunday in nearby Annapolis, Md., against the U.S. Naval Academy. The varsity eight team came in third, a distant seven seconds behind Navy’s first boat and less than one second after their second boat. The Hoyas’ novice eight team also finished just behind Navy’s ‘A’ team but did edge Navy’s ‘B’ team by a narrow eight-tenths of a second. Georgetown’s novice boat defeated Navy’s novice squad by more than ten seconds in the varsity four race.
“We’d all agree it was a little bit of a disappointing weekend for us,” Hoya heavyweight varsity coach Jimmy King said. “We felt we were moving the boat well, but it did not carry over into the race on Sunday. The bottom line is that we did not execute to our own ability.”
The Hoyas’ lightweight squad returns to action this Saturday, squaring off with Wisconsin at home on the Potomac before preparing for the Eastern Sprints and IRA Championships in the coming weeks. The heavyweight squad races in the Big East Championships at Worcester, Mass., on Sunday. Coach King will take three boats—Varsity Eight, Varsity Four and Novice Four—to the meet and expects his heavyweight team to prove it is an underrated sixth seed.
“We know we have boat speed,” King said. “We have expectations that all three boats are going to do well.”
