Crew Teams Succeed Across Board at Invite

The rowing teams placed a cherry on top of a good fall season at the Syracuse Invitational regatta this weekend with multiple individual victories and a first or second place finish in every event the Red was entered in. [4]Making ripples: The men’s and women’s crew teams performed well this weekend, placing among the top-5 in almost every event they were entered in at the Syracuse Invitational regatta.

The women led the way for the Red with a victory in the varsity fours event. The first Cornell boat finished the 5,000 meter course in 19:31, just two and a half seconds ahead of runner-up Buffalo. Cornell also had JV women crews finish tenth and fourteenth in the varsity four event, and second and fourth in the JV four event.

Following an outstanding performance at the Head of the Fish regatta last weekend, the women’s novice ‘A’ boat promises a bright future for the Cornell women’s rowing program. The crew finished second to Syracuse with a time of 19:30. In a performance indicative of the team’s depth, the second Cornell novice boat finished in fourth place, only eight seconds behind their teammates.

The Cornell men’s crews dominated the men’s four event, with the top four boats finishing in second, third, fifth and sixth places. The only crews who managed to infiltrate the Red’s block belonged to Syracuse. The second and third place Cornell boats were composed of the top eight rowers of the heavyweight squad, and they finished within 0.3 seconds of each other.

“The race showed that Syracuse has four really good guys, but we have eight to ten really good guys that are all capable of being in the varsity boat,” said senior heavyweight rowing captain Jason Malumed.

The men’s novice crews echoed the commanding performances of the upperclassmen boats, taking second, third, fourth and fifth place in the novice eight event. The two heavyweight novice boats finished the course in 16:42 and 16:46, followed by the lightweight crews in 16:52 and 16:54.

“Usually the Syracuse race isn’t great because the weather is really [bad], so we weren’t supposed to do as well as we did,” Malumed said. “It’s good to go into the winter with the knowledge that we were pretty close. We do have a little bit more work to do to be at the level we need to be at to win Sprints.”

The rowers now head into their winter training season and will return to the water in March.

“Winter is the longest part of our season,” Malumed said, “but it allows us to make up ground on all of our rivals.”