The Lafayette club crew team won six out of eight races at the Mid-Atlantic Rowing Conference (MARC) regatta last Saturday in Lewisberry, Pa. Both the men’s and women’s varsity-4 boats emerged victorious, joining the women’s and men’s varsity pair boats, and the women’s novice-4 and novice-8 boats in the win column.
“Our team performed outstandingly at [MARC],” said freshman Kendall Rothfus. “We’re really proud of what we accomplished last weekend and all season thus far as a team.”
On the men’s side, it was the third straight week with a first place finish for the varsity-4 boat, which narrowly edged George Mason University in the grand finale. The men’s varsity pair also earned first place and the men’s novice-4 finished second.
For the women, the varsity-4 came in first out of 10 teams in the field with a final time of 8:25.84, more than 20 seconds faster than the boat from North Park University which finished second.
Both the women’s novice-8 and novice-4 boats won their races, beating Penn State University and Adrian College respectively, with the novice-4 boat finishing nearly 30 seconds ahead of the Bulldogs. The varsity pair boat emerged from their five-team field with a win as well.
“As a club team, we go into these races as underdogs,” Rothfus said. “But we’ve proven through hard work that our program is just as competitive as any [division one] or [division three] rowing program.”
“We have to work extra hard to keep up with the varsity competition,” added senior women’s varsity captain Zoe Bremier. “It keeps us humble.”
Despite racing each of the past four weekends, Bremier said the team has also been gradually increasing their workload in practice to prepare for the end of the season.
“Every boat has been adding in two-a-day practices throughout the week,” she said. “We have a large number of dedicated athletes who are all rowing for each other.”
The team will have this weekend and next week off before their final competition of the season, the Dad Vail regatta, which will take place in Philadelphia, Pa., next Friday and Saturday.
“For the first week [with no races] we have been focusing on making our strokes as powerful and effective as possible,” said Bremier. “Next week we will be tapering after a long and successful season to give our bodies some rest before we lay it all out on the Schuylkill [river].”