Coming off their success at the prestigious Head of the Charles Regatta the previous week, the crew team carried the stamina into last weekend’s Head of the Schuylkill Regatta, earning impressive spots in the race against a competitive set of crew teams.

“At the Head of the Schuylkill, we raced in the championship four category, but at the Charles, we row in the collegiate four category,” senior Elizabeth Good explained, who raced this weekend in the championship four and the club championship eight.

The crew team rowed against more competitors this past Saturday than at the Head of the Charles the previous week.

“This course is not as notoriously challenging for coxswains as at the Charles, but they still worked super hard,” Good said. “It’s also a course that we’re all more familiar with because we race here often. Additionally, the course is also four kilometers while Charles is five kilometers.”

Coxed by senior Erika Nally, the weekend was highlighted by the women’s championship four, which placed fifth of forty teams with a time of 14:31.964. The boat was manned by Senior Haley Simpson and Good, and juniors Abby Hammel and Lauren Salbinski.

“For the women’s team, we were really pleased with how we ended up placing. We beat some really big names like Georgetown and Temple, which was really exciting,” Good said.

The women’s championship eights came in 19th and 31st of 41 teams with times of 14:05.726 and 14:47.464, respectively. Unfortunately, the women’s eighth boat experienced a crash, but the team was able to bounce back and finish in good time.

“In the eight we had a really strong race, and it was feeling really powerful and fast. We passed some boats, and then we were about ten strokes from the finish line. We were trying to pass Saint Joeseph’s, and we were telling them to yield. Saint Joe’s did not yield, and so they ended up kind of cutting us off and we crashed into them,” Good said. “Oars were tangled and it was really messy, so we had to stop and try and get them to push off. Everyone was tired and frazzled which ended up adding about forty seconds to our time in the end.”

“That was the first time I’ve ever experienced anything like that, so we were really lucky that nobody was injured. The coach came over and apologized on behalf of their team,” Good added.

The women’s novice fours came in ninth and 11th out of 17 teams with times of 17:08.676 and 17:41.374, respectively.

“This was the first race that our novice came to, and a lot of them are brand new and have just been rowing for a couple of weeks,” Good said. “This was their first opportunity to race, and they did really well. We’re really proud of them.”

The men’s championship four also performed well, placing 15th of 34 teams (13:13.124).

“The men did really well in their varsity category,” Good commended. “They had a really tough competition, and they ended up beating a couple of Ivy League boats who are notoriously really good rowers.”

The crew team’s next outing will be at the Frostbite Regatta in Philadelphia in two weeks.

“It’s a two-kilometer race, so instead of the head races that we’ve been doing, this is a sprint,” Good said. “We have some very tough competition lined up, so we’re going to spend the next two weeks working hard getting into sprint mode to take on some really tough teams.”