Princeton University Athletics
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Fourth-Ranked Lightweights Make Home Debut With Historic Dartmouth Race
April 07, 2016 | Men's Rowing - Lightweight
Of the 38 teams within the Princeton athletic department, the Princeton men's lightweights will be the final one to make their home debut this season, and it's an opportunity they have awaited for quite some time.
“Returning to Carnegie has us salivating like a wolfpack in a pigpen,” sophomore Blake Lange said. “We take utmost pride in defending our home course, and every chance we get to do so is exciting. We just have to make sure we don't take our foot off the gas now that we get to settle into a month-long homestand, especially because it culminates with HYP, one of our most important races of the year.
“Carnegie is an honest lake,” added Lange, who has helped the Princeton 2V to a 3-0 start this season. “We have a straight, buoyed course and mostly good conditions, so the crew that takes the victory on Carnegie has true speed. Being dominant at home would be great for morale.”
It has been a near-perfect season for the fourth-ranked Princeton lightweights, though the 1V did take its first loss last Saturday on Overpeck Lake to the No. 1 Columbia lightweights. Including that race, the top three boats have gone 8-1 this season, including a 3-0 mark for the 2V.
“Through training and our early racing opportunities against Navy, Georgetown, and Columbia we have progressed boatloads, and fortunately for us we still have the potential to develop much more speed between now and Eastern Sprints,” said sophomore John Killeen, another member of the 2V. “We knew Columbia was going to have a wicked fast first half of the race and I think the 2V did an excellent job staying composed and capitalizing on our second half speed.
"The depth in this league is extraordinary; just on our team we have unbelievably strong six boat fleet,” Killeen added. “This depth means there are no easy weeks and we always have to stay on our toes because we never know what potential our competition may bring.”
This week has an added unknown for Princeton, which will host Delaware and Dartmouth Saturday morning on Lake Carnegie. The unique opponent here, ironically enough, is Dartmouth; though the two boats meet annually at both Sprints and IRAs, this will be the first regular season regatta at one of their two venues since 1964 (both boats were involved in the Augusta Invitational several times since then).
Racing is scheduled to begin at 10:15 with the 3V meeting, while the 1V boats will compete at 10:45.
The unbeaten 2V will race at 10:30; while Lange has been encouraged by the early results, he knows that there is plenty of unknown still out there.
“The 2V looks extremely promising this year,” he said. “The boat is extremely young and continues to develop as fast as a mutant lab rat. While it's encouraging to have posted a big margin over the Columbia crew, we can't let that get to our ego before we see how the rest of the league stacks up.”
Princeton Lightweight Men vs. Dartmouth/Delaware
10:15 am • Third Varsity
10:30 am • Second Varsity
10:45 am • First Varsity
11:00 am • Fourth Varsity
11:15 am • Fifth & Sixth Varsity