The Penn State crew team rowed diligently through a weekend of choppy water on the Cooper River in Camden, N.J., this weekend to come away with two Grand Final placements, three Petite Final placements and decent finishes in three other races. All the boats racing performed well enough in their preliminary heats to advance to a final.
"That's the first time in recent memory that every boat has placed in a final," lightweight rower Jon Stine said.
The women's heavyweight four performed especially well, taking fifth place as the only club crew competing in the varsity four event.
The women got a great start in their preliminary heat by defeating five other crews. They let out screams of excitement as they defeated Sacramento State by three seconds, taking first place.
"Normally when we are rowing, the only person talking is the coxswain," heavyweight rower Natalie Dell said. "As we got near the finish line and everything was perfectly in sync, perfectly balanced, we just couldn't help but scream. Everyone was going crazy at the finish line."
During the semifinals, Penn State's women placed second to host Villanova, losing by two and a half seconds but defeated their other opponents by more than 18 seconds. Because Penn State placed in the top three in the semi-final, it raced again Sunday in the Grand Final.
Because so many Penn State boats made the finals, the women lost coxswain Chris Cohen to another boat. First-year coxswain Erin Pierce replaced Cohen and steered Penn State to a fifth-place finish in the women's four Grand Final.
"She was perfect," Dell said. "We couldn't have asked for anything more. It's not easy to coxswain for a crew that you've never worked with before."
Penn State's women rowed well across the board with a fourth-place finish in the Grand Final for the women's second varsity four, a third-place finish in the novice Grand Final and a third-place finish from the women's club in a single race.
The men had worse luck with some poor starts in their preliminary races but turned it around on Sunday.
"We've been doing a lot of starts in practices," heavyweight rower Ben Burgoyne said. "It was kind of strange."
The men's novice four placed first in the Petite Finals while the lightweight and heavyweight men both placed second, also in Petite Finals.
The lightweight boat rowers were not particularly happy with their placement in the Petite Finals. However, it did allow them to take care of some unfinished business by providing them another chance to beat Duquesne.
Penn State's start in the Petite Final was interrupted in its sixth stroke when it caught a "crab," meaning the oar blade slices into the water and gets caught under the surface, leaving the boat dead in the water and two complete boat lengths out of fifth place.
"I remember thinking distinctly in my mind, 'Oh, no, this is not going to happen again,' " Stine said.
The team responded quickly, surpassing Villanova, Lehigh and Pittsburgh in the first thousand meters of the race. Penn State was neck and neck with Duquesne as the two squads approached the buoy at the 1,500-meter mark.
In the race's final strokes, Penn State pushed forward to beat Duquesne by just more than two seconds.
"They knew they were ahead of them when they heard a rather loud expletive come from the Duquesne boat," Penn State coach John Biddle said.
"I'm convinced if we had another 500 meters we would have won," Stine said.