Princeton University Athletics
Friday, June 2
Sacramento, Calif.
12:00 PM ET (9:00 local)
Princeton University
vs
IRA Championships (Day 1)
Seniors Nick Mead (left) and Trey Francis will try to cap their careers with one more IRA Championship medal this weekend on Lake Natoma.
Photo by: Beverly Schaefer
Fifth-Seeded Heavyweights Head West, Look To Peak On Lake Natoma At 2017 IRA Championships
May 31, 2017 | Heavyweight Rowing
KEY LINKS
LIVE STREAM: Friday morning l Friday afternoon l Saturday l Sunday
IRA CHAMPIONSHIPS: Live Results l Full Schedule & Lane Assignments l Seeds l Princeton's History at the IRAs
(Below the preview are all the pertinent race times for all Princeton heavyweight boats for the weekend, including the lane assignments for the opening heat.)
The Princeton heavyweights know they will not be the focal point heading into this week's IRA Championships, and they're fine with that.
After three straight years of having the IRA Championships in the Tigers' own backyard (Mercer Lake), Princeton traveled across the country over the weekend to prepare for the 2017 Championships, which will be held June 2-4 on Lake Natoma at the Sacramento State Aquatic Center in Gold River, Calif.
Princeton has had a strong run of IRA Championships recently, especially during a medal sweep last season. In the last three years, Princeton boats took home seven medals from IRAs; during the prior four, they didn't win any.
The 2016 IRA Championships was one that Tiger rowers won't soon forget. Princeton won gold in the 3V, silver in the 2V and the V4, and bronze in the 1V finals.
Matching that effort this year would mean outperforming their seed in several different events, but the Tigers didn't train for a year and travel across the country to be content with any projected finish.
The varsity eight will be the fifth seed in its field after taking bronze in a hard-fought finish at Sprints. Either Washington or California has won every IRA championship since 2006, and they have traded the top spot in the USRowing national poll all year, so they have been set as the top seeds for a while. Yale and Harvard assured themselves of the next two seeds with their 1-2 finish at Sprints three weeks ago; Yale will be looking to do what California did last year — go across the country and upset the top seed in the biggest race of the year.
That leaves Princeton as the fifth seed, which it earned by holding off Boston University by less than .2 of a second at Sprints. The Tiger 1V went 6-2 on the season, with its only losses coming to Harvard and Yale. They held that position at Sprints, and they're ready to take one more shot at those two boats to fight for a third straight finish on the medal stand.
The depth of talent in the sport is evident in the seeding of 1V crews. Princeton will race in Friday's fourth heat (12 pm ET, 9 am local) from Lane 4, with fourth-seeded Harvard coming from Lane 3. In past years, those two seeds would have seemed like an easy projection to advance.
Maybe that will be the case, but keep your eye on Lanes 2 and 5. 12th-seeded Stanford will come from Lane 2; the Cardinal finished third at the Pac-12 Championships (by a decisive margin) to Washington and California, but nobody on the East can be sure just how fast that boat can be. As for 13th-seeded Wisconsin, the Badgers were only about two seconds behind Princeton in the Sprints heat.
The IRA Championships are no longer just about Saturday and Sunday, and Princeton will be ready for that. But the further the Tigers advance, the more confidence they will gain. And they have shown more than once the willingness to throw it all out there on the final day of the year and challenge the best crews in the country.
The 2V will be an exceptionally interesting boat to watch over the weekend. Princeton has earned silver in the 2V in each of the last three IRA Championships, but the Tigers had also fallen to Harvard and Yale during the regular season, which may have softened expectations on the boat heading into Sprints.
Even the boat itself wasn't exactly sure what its ceiling could be with a great race.
As it turned out, that ceiling was quite high.
"Going into the final we didn't know how fast Yale and Harvard would be," sophomore Ralph Elsegood said after Princeton's gold medal performance at Sprints. "We wanted to start fast, take stock of the race and then begin to move. We knew we were in contention for a win but we weren't expecting it. Our training after the Yale race was solid and we knew we were gaining speed as our times in practice began to get fast."
Princeton flipped its result against Harvard by about six seconds, and Yale by about seven seconds, to win its second 2V Sprints title in three years. They also bring a surge of both speed and confidence to Lake Natoma, where they will try to take that one extra step up the medal stand.
"The result we got certainly gave us confidence in our training," Elsegood said. "We've had some pretty specific technical focuses as a crew and the win proved to us that they've been working. Since Sprints the boat has stepped on again, buoyed by the knowledge that it is all to play for at IRAs."
Elsegood would know better than anybody what it feels like to win at IRAs. He was in the 3V that capped a perfect 2016 season with the program's first IRA gold medal since 2003.
"Winning IRAs in the 2V would mean a huge amount," he said. "Including myself, five of last year's 3V have progressed to the 2V and we are keen to repeat last year's success. I think most crews that have won IRAs would say that focusing on each race as it comes, whether it's the heat, semi or final, is critical to success. Treating each round like a final sets a crew up well for Sunday and reduces the risk of crews making silly mistakes that can hinder the performance of a crew during the weekend."
This year's 3V is in a similar position to the 1V — it has beaten every crew it faced this season besides Harvard and Yale, but it lost to those two crews in both the regular season and Sprints. Brown gave the Tigers a strong fight in both the regular season and Sprints.
Princeton will also send a varsity four, which won silver at the IRAs last year.
1V – 5th Seed
Friday heat: 12 pm ET (9 am)
(1) Drexel, (2) Stanford, (3) Harvard, (4) Princeton, (5) Wisconsin, (6) St. Joseph's
Saturday A/B semifinals: 12:/12:35 ET (9:25/9:35)
Sunday grand/petite finals: 3:30/3:15 ET (12:30/12:15)
2V – 3rd Seed
Friday heat: 12:50 pm ET (9:50)
(1) FIT, (2) Wisconsin, (3) Princeton, (4) Harvard, (5) Dartmouth, (6) Hobart
Saturday A/B semifinals: 1:05/1:15 ET (10:05/10:15)
Sunday grand/petite finals: 2:20/2:10 ET (11:20/11:10)
3V – 5th Seed
Friday heat: 1:40 pm ET (10:40)
(1) Santa Clara, (2) Syracuse, (3) Yale, (4) Princeton, (5) Dartmouth
Saturday A/B semifinals: 1:55/2:05 ET (10:55/11:05)
Sunday grand/petite finals: 2:00/1:50 ET (11:00/10:50)
V4 — no seeds
Friday heat: 2:10 pm ET (11:10)
(1) Colgate, (2) California, (3) Princeton, (4) Drexel, (5) Oregon State
Saturday A/B semifinals: 2:35/2:45 ET (11:35/11:45)
Sunday grand/petite finals: 12:30/12:20 ET (9:30/9:20)
LIVE STREAM: Friday morning l Friday afternoon l Saturday l Sunday
IRA CHAMPIONSHIPS: Live Results l Full Schedule & Lane Assignments l Seeds l Princeton's History at the IRAs
(Below the preview are all the pertinent race times for all Princeton heavyweight boats for the weekend, including the lane assignments for the opening heat.)
The Princeton heavyweights know they will not be the focal point heading into this week's IRA Championships, and they're fine with that.
After three straight years of having the IRA Championships in the Tigers' own backyard (Mercer Lake), Princeton traveled across the country over the weekend to prepare for the 2017 Championships, which will be held June 2-4 on Lake Natoma at the Sacramento State Aquatic Center in Gold River, Calif.
Princeton has had a strong run of IRA Championships recently, especially during a medal sweep last season. In the last three years, Princeton boats took home seven medals from IRAs; during the prior four, they didn't win any.
The 2016 IRA Championships was one that Tiger rowers won't soon forget. Princeton won gold in the 3V, silver in the 2V and the V4, and bronze in the 1V finals.
Matching that effort this year would mean outperforming their seed in several different events, but the Tigers didn't train for a year and travel across the country to be content with any projected finish.
The varsity eight will be the fifth seed in its field after taking bronze in a hard-fought finish at Sprints. Either Washington or California has won every IRA championship since 2006, and they have traded the top spot in the USRowing national poll all year, so they have been set as the top seeds for a while. Yale and Harvard assured themselves of the next two seeds with their 1-2 finish at Sprints three weeks ago; Yale will be looking to do what California did last year — go across the country and upset the top seed in the biggest race of the year.
That leaves Princeton as the fifth seed, which it earned by holding off Boston University by less than .2 of a second at Sprints. The Tiger 1V went 6-2 on the season, with its only losses coming to Harvard and Yale. They held that position at Sprints, and they're ready to take one more shot at those two boats to fight for a third straight finish on the medal stand.
The depth of talent in the sport is evident in the seeding of 1V crews. Princeton will race in Friday's fourth heat (12 pm ET, 9 am local) from Lane 4, with fourth-seeded Harvard coming from Lane 3. In past years, those two seeds would have seemed like an easy projection to advance.
Maybe that will be the case, but keep your eye on Lanes 2 and 5. 12th-seeded Stanford will come from Lane 2; the Cardinal finished third at the Pac-12 Championships (by a decisive margin) to Washington and California, but nobody on the East can be sure just how fast that boat can be. As for 13th-seeded Wisconsin, the Badgers were only about two seconds behind Princeton in the Sprints heat.
The IRA Championships are no longer just about Saturday and Sunday, and Princeton will be ready for that. But the further the Tigers advance, the more confidence they will gain. And they have shown more than once the willingness to throw it all out there on the final day of the year and challenge the best crews in the country.
The 2V will be an exceptionally interesting boat to watch over the weekend. Princeton has earned silver in the 2V in each of the last three IRA Championships, but the Tigers had also fallen to Harvard and Yale during the regular season, which may have softened expectations on the boat heading into Sprints.
Even the boat itself wasn't exactly sure what its ceiling could be with a great race.
As it turned out, that ceiling was quite high.
"Going into the final we didn't know how fast Yale and Harvard would be," sophomore Ralph Elsegood said after Princeton's gold medal performance at Sprints. "We wanted to start fast, take stock of the race and then begin to move. We knew we were in contention for a win but we weren't expecting it. Our training after the Yale race was solid and we knew we were gaining speed as our times in practice began to get fast."
Princeton flipped its result against Harvard by about six seconds, and Yale by about seven seconds, to win its second 2V Sprints title in three years. They also bring a surge of both speed and confidence to Lake Natoma, where they will try to take that one extra step up the medal stand.
"The result we got certainly gave us confidence in our training," Elsegood said. "We've had some pretty specific technical focuses as a crew and the win proved to us that they've been working. Since Sprints the boat has stepped on again, buoyed by the knowledge that it is all to play for at IRAs."
Elsegood would know better than anybody what it feels like to win at IRAs. He was in the 3V that capped a perfect 2016 season with the program's first IRA gold medal since 2003.
"Winning IRAs in the 2V would mean a huge amount," he said. "Including myself, five of last year's 3V have progressed to the 2V and we are keen to repeat last year's success. I think most crews that have won IRAs would say that focusing on each race as it comes, whether it's the heat, semi or final, is critical to success. Treating each round like a final sets a crew up well for Sunday and reduces the risk of crews making silly mistakes that can hinder the performance of a crew during the weekend."
This year's 3V is in a similar position to the 1V — it has beaten every crew it faced this season besides Harvard and Yale, but it lost to those two crews in both the regular season and Sprints. Brown gave the Tigers a strong fight in both the regular season and Sprints.
Princeton will also send a varsity four, which won silver at the IRAs last year.
1V – 5th Seed
Friday heat: 12 pm ET (9 am)
(1) Drexel, (2) Stanford, (3) Harvard, (4) Princeton, (5) Wisconsin, (6) St. Joseph's
Saturday A/B semifinals: 12:/12:35 ET (9:25/9:35)
Sunday grand/petite finals: 3:30/3:15 ET (12:30/12:15)
2V – 3rd Seed
Friday heat: 12:50 pm ET (9:50)
(1) FIT, (2) Wisconsin, (3) Princeton, (4) Harvard, (5) Dartmouth, (6) Hobart
Saturday A/B semifinals: 1:05/1:15 ET (10:05/10:15)
Sunday grand/petite finals: 2:20/2:10 ET (11:20/11:10)
3V – 5th Seed
Friday heat: 1:40 pm ET (10:40)
(1) Santa Clara, (2) Syracuse, (3) Yale, (4) Princeton, (5) Dartmouth
Saturday A/B semifinals: 1:55/2:05 ET (10:55/11:05)
Sunday grand/petite finals: 2:00/1:50 ET (11:00/10:50)
V4 — no seeds
Friday heat: 2:10 pm ET (11:10)
(1) Colgate, (2) California, (3) Princeton, (4) Drexel, (5) Oregon State
Saturday A/B semifinals: 2:35/2:45 ET (11:35/11:45)
Sunday grand/petite finals: 12:30/12:20 ET (9:30/9:20)
Players Mentioned
/ Heavyweight Rowing
Tuesday, June 04
Wednesday, June 22
Monday, June 06
Tuesday, April 26