Princeton University Athletics
Players Mentioned
Open Women Looking For First Ivy Title Since 2006; Captains Profiled
May 14, 2010 | Women's Rowing - Open
EARC COVERAGE (including schedule) • ROW2K's EARC PREVIEW
Head coach Lori Dauphiny knows her squad couldn't have accomplished more during an impressive 2010 regular season. She also knows that won't mean a thing Sunday when her boats line up on Cooper River for the EAWRC Championships.
Princeton opened the season as the eighth-ranked boat in the country and had a pair of experienced senior co-captains in Sara Hendershot and Ariel Frost leading the way. It also had a strong group of incoming freshmen, each of whom would now be allowed to compete for spots in the varsity eight as early as the first weekend of the season.
There was plenty of talent on the roster. How it would mix was anybody's guess.
The first clue came on March 27, when Princeton defeated a pair of Top 10 teams in Brown and Ohio State to open the season. Ever since, including an April 17 race against then-No. 1 Virginia and reigning Ivy champion Yale, Princeton has done nothing but win. In most cases, each of Princeton's top three boats (1V, 2V, V4) has done nothing but win.
Those results are reflected in Princeton's seeds this weekend. The first varsity is seeded first and will race in an 8:40 heat against Cornell, Navy, Northeastern, Boston University and George Washington. The highest-seeded of that group is Cornell, a team Princeton beat by 17.9 seconds in the regular season. Should the Tigers finish in the top two, they will advance to the grand final at 4:55 p.m. Last season, Princeton held off Brown by more than three seconds to place third in the grand final; the Tigers haven't won an EAWRC title since the NCAA championship season of 2006.
Second-seeded Yale and third-seeded Brown figure to be the top competition, although it has been an impressively strong season for Ivy League open crews. Of the top nine seeds in the first varsity competition, eight are Ivy programs; should seedings hold throughout, the grand final would feature six Ivy League teams. Dartmouth, Columbia and Cornell make up the fourth through sixth seeds, respectively.
While the Ivy League title is given to the winner of the first varsity race, there are other titles and an overall points trophy up for grabs, and Princeton's depth has been as impressive as its first varsity speed this season. The Tiger 2V is seeded second behind Brown and will race at 9:20 in a heat featuring Navy, Penn, Harvard, Northeastern and B.C. The top two will advance to the 4:20 grand final.
The varsity four is undefeated in the EAWRC and will be the top seed Sunday. Princeton will race at 9:45 against Syracuce, Dartmouth, Harvard and Navy, with the top two advancing to the 3:45 grand final.
Princeton will also send a third varsity eight, which is seeded fifth and will race at 8:10 against Rutgers, Columbia, Cornell and Syracuse. The top two will race in the 3:00 final.
You can listen to Dauphiny talk about both the season and the upcoming Eastern championships in this week's edition of TigerCast. Co-captains Frost and Hendershot were recently profiled on GoPrincetonTigers.TV, which can be seen below.