This weekend at the Eastern College Athletic Conference Championship the Massachusetts rowing team failed to duplicate the three silver medal performance they had last year. Instead, the team came home after Sunday's race with a silver and bronze medal. Overall, the Minutewomen's performance resembled what they were projected to do. Three of the of UMass's five boats that raced, finished where they were ranked at the start of the regatta. The Grand Final for the Varsity 8 boats finished just as they were projected. Bucknell (6 minutes, 37.178 seconds) took first, followed by Buffalo (6:40.879), Rhode Island (6:42.693) and UMass (6:50.019). Rutgers (6:52.930) and Colgate (7:04.114) rounded out the rest of the Grand Final. Of the top four boats, the Minutewomen were the only boat that did not improve on their time from the first round. UMass's time slipped not even a second, but with the other three top boats all improving by more than a second and a half, it can make a difference in a race. Bucknell improved its time the most, by more than seven seconds, while URI rowed faster by five seconds. The most successful boat on the day for the Maroon and White was the Second Varsity 8, taking the team's lone silver medal. Again the Minutewomen finished the day where they were projected to finish at the beginning of the day. After finishing second in the first round to Buffalo (6:56.525), UMass (6:58.974) made significant improvement on their time in the Grand Final. The Minutewomen shaved more than seven seconds off of their first round time to complete the Grand Final in 6:51.578. Despite the improvement on their time, the Minutewomen took second behind Bucknell (6:50.391). UMass led the race for its majority only to fall to the Bison in the last quarter of the race. Bucknell improved its first round time by almost 15 seconds to overcome the Minutewomen. "We had the lead for three quarters of the race over Bucknell," UMass assistant coach Pat Tynan said. "I don't think we we're expecting to be ahead of them at the half." The rest of the Grand Final race was rounded out by Buffalo (6:54.817) taking third, followed by URI (6:54.877), Rutgers (6:59.136) and George Mason (7:01.363). The only UMass boat that did not finish where they were seeded at the beginning of the day was the Novice 8. Coming in to the race after a strong win over Northeastern, the Minutewomen's Novice 8 had earned the No. 1 seeding. UMass (7:23.719) took first in its heat during the first round but only third overall behind Rutgers (7:20.332) and Buffalo (7:23.616). The Grand Final saw the Minutewomen (7:13.404) finish third again, despite an improvement of more than 10 seconds on their first round time. URI (7:07.851) took home the gold due to its improvement of more than 17 seconds. Rutgers (7:10.065) improved its time by 10 seconds to edge UMass for the silver. The last race the Minutewomen took part in was the Varsity 4. UMass entered in two boats in the race just as URI, Bucknell and Rutgers did. The UMass "A" boat (8:17.873) had the No. 5 seed coming into the day's action and took fifth in the Grand Final. The "B" boat finished ninth overall in the first round and therefore raced in the Petite Final. The "B" boat (8:14.056) took third in the Petite Final and ninth overall, despite having a time that was more than three seconds faster than the Minutewomen's "A" boat in the Grand Final. UMass will head to Philadelphia this weekend to race in the 70th Annual Dad Vail Regatta. The regatta is the largest collegiate regatta in the United States and will feature over 100 colleges from the United States and Canada. The races begin on Friday and will conclude on Saturday. Jeff R. Larnard can be reached at jlarnard@student.umass.edu.
UM falls short of last year's performances
Published: Monday, May 5, 2008
Updated: Tuesday, February 3, 2009
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