The Big Green rowing teams opened the fall season with success. The women's, men's lightweight and men's heavyweight teams traveled to Middletown, Conn. Oct. 10 where they competed in the Head of the Connecticut with schools from the Ivy League and the East Coast.
Races during the fall season differ from those during the spring in that fall competitions are usually three miles in length, as opposed to 2,000 meters in the spring. Fall competitions are also raced against the clock -- when each boat starts approximately 15 seconds after its predecessor, unlike the spring season when all boats start at the same time.
Most impressive among the results at the Head of the Connecticut is that the lightweight four placed first and defended their 1992 title, winning with a time of 18 minutes, 30.97 seconds.
"We got off to a good start," Captain Brian Crounse '94 said. "Overall, it was a solid performance."
Other lightweight results included a sixth place finish in the intermediate heavyweight eight category, and fourth and ninth place finishes in the lightweight eight competition.
"I was most impressed with the second lightweight boat because they were pretty inexperienced," Crounse said. "They rowed the race without a skeg and beat some older and more experienced crews."
The heavyweight four placed second, competing with thirty other boats. The only team to beat the Dartmouth open four was a boat with non-collegiate athletes, some of whom were former national team members.
Heavyweight captain Fred Malloy '94 was pleased with the results but looks ahead towards this weekend for the real test.
"This weekend's race will be a better test of our abilities, as we will face some tough competition," he said.
A sophomore heavyweight four finished 10th in the open fours category. The heavyweights also raced an intermediate 8 which finished fifth at 16:51. Trinity pulled away with the victory in the intermediate 8 with a time of 16:36.
The women's teams raced a boat in the open eight and two boats in the intermediate eight. The intermediate boats both fared well, placing third and 10th.
The third place boat beat all the other Eastern Association Women's Rowing Colleges which Dartmouth normally races, including Radcliffe, Yale, Boston University and Brown.
Captain Julie Stevenson '94 was especially pleased with the performance because the third place boat, which was not stacked, beat all of the Eastern Association of Women's Rowing College boats, some of which may have been stacked.
But the open eight ran into some bad luck by running aground before the race and the cox box broke half way through the race. They still managed to finish in ninth place out of more than thirty boats in competition. Stevenson looks forward to the Head of the Charles when the team will take what they learned from Connecticut and unleash it in Boston.
All three crews will compete at the Head of the Charles on Sunday.
