By Brian Pivonka
Some might say the Northeastern women’s crew team is an experienced team down the stretch, with three consecutive tight endings to their races.
Unfortunately for the Huskies, two of them have been for second place.
Syracuse’s (6:32.7) fast break attempt to outrun the competition was successful Saturday, beating the Huskies (6:37.3) and the University of Pennsylvania (6:38.4) and taking home the Orange Cup.
This was Syracuse’s second consecutive Orange Cup victory, including three of the last four. Northeastern has won the most Orange Cups with 12.
Syracuse got going early, taking a full-length lead over both the Huskies and the Quakers at the 500-meter mark.
Northeastern coach Joe Wilhelm blamed a slow start for the Huskies’ troubles.
“I think we had a very poor start, so we put a lot of pressure on ourselves for the back end of the race,” Wilhelm said. “[Syracuse] established a pretty surprising lead, but we got ourselves together and raced on. We caught Penn in the end and were going after Syracuse.”
Wilhelm said he thought all three teams were fairly equal, and was surprised by the distant finish of the race.
“It was very surprising that [Syracuse] got as big of a lead as they did so quickly,” Wilhelm said. “I didn’t think that they were four seconds better than us. I give the varsity a bit of credit for keeping their composure and going after Syracuse in the last 500 meters.”
Though Wilhelm’s team has won only one of their first three races, he was able to find an upside to the situation.
“I think that it’s good for us that we’ve been in some tight races. We’ve showed we have the poise to row a good second half of the race.”
While the Huskies didn’t win, captain Amy Lawrence said they were able to achieve one of their goals (improving their sprint sequence), but knew that the team could still improve.
“Yes, our sprint sequence went really well. We did it better than we did it all week,” Lawrence said. “Every week you find something to work on. You look for that perfect race. We haven’t had that yet, but we’ll try for it next week.”
The second varsity also got off to a slow start and could not catch up against Syracuse or Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania got out to a lead and ended up with a time of 6:41.1. Syracuse finished about nine seconds behind at 6:50.4 and Northeastern followed at 7:02.6.
Wilhelm thought the results were deceiving of how his team actually competed.
“That race was spread out so quickly, Pennsylvania took a lead over Syracuse, Syracuse took the lead over us, that it’s hard to tell how they raced,” Wilhelm said. “Pennsylvania has more depth (on their second varsity), so they’re faster. We have a young second crew, we have no seniors; they just need to keep pounding away at it. I thought we raced the best race of the year. They were very aggressive. They need to learn to push through their race.”
The novice boat won their race, outdistancing Pennsylvania by more than 15 seconds.
Wilhelm was impressed by his crew’s performance.
“The novice team did a great job,” Wilhelm said. “They established an early lead and made it look easy. They rowed a solid race and performed the way we expected them to perform.”
MEN’S CREW
The third time wasn’t the charm for the Boston University men’s crew team, and neither was the fourth.
Northeastern (1-0) continued its success in the 27th annual Arlett Cup against BU (1-2) Saturday on the Charles River, beating out the Terriers 6:32.2 to 6:36.8 for their fourth consecutive win in the event.
The Huskies’ 21st overall Arlett Cup leads BU in their all-time series at 37-9.
With a quick start and a two lengths lead at 1000 meters, the Huskies were in control from the start. BU made a late comeback to slice the overall difference, but the finish line loomed closer for the winning Huskies.
BU, who had lost to national power Brown just a week ago by only a second, looked to create a close race, but Northeastern took the lead for good with a great start.
In the 2nd varsity event, BU edged Northeastern 6:37.9 to 6:38.8. The Huskies’ freshman squad was victorious on the day as well, beating BU 6:48.6 to 6:59.0.
The Huskies will race on the Charles River again this Saturday at 9:12 a.m., against Brown in the Dreissigaker Cup.
— Jeff Powalisz of the News Staff contributed the men’s crew portion of this report.
