Princeton Lightweight Women Dominant Thus Far

The Princeton LWT V8 racing at Redwood Shores (Photo: © Jim Sykora)
The Princeton Lightweight Women have been making waves so far this Spring, beginning with open water victories over both of last year's top teams from the IRA final at Redwood shores. The Tiger Lights attended the Women's Pac-10 Challenge, March 26-27, and took on three different opponents in two days. The Princeton Varsity 8 defeated the perennially quick Wisconsin on Saturday, with a margin of over 10 seconds separating them from the Badgers. They accomplished this after besting a St. Mary's Openweight crew earlier that day. The Tigers continued their success on Sunday, defeating last year's IRA Champion Stanford by over 11 seconds, to finish out the weekend and begin the season in dominant fashion. In addition to the great results from the Varsity 8, the Princeton 2V has posted a 4-1 record, with their only loss coming to Wisconsin.

Most recently, the Tigers took on crews from Bucknell and MIT (ranked 6th and 7th in the US, respectively), and again took control early, crossing the line some 16 seconds in front of second place Bucknell, and 40 seconds in front of MIT. Given all this, it's no wonder that the Princeton Lightweight Women have found themselves, like their Openweight counterparts, as well as the Tiger Lightweight Men, atop the USRowing coaches' poll. Stanford is currently ranked no. 2, with Wisconsin coming in at no. 3.

The Tiger Lights have their next challenge coming up this weekend, when they will travel to Boston to face a 4-1 Radcliffe squad (No. 4 Radcliffe's only loss coming to Stanford last weekend on the Charles) for the Class of 1999 Cup. Princeton currently leads the series 9-2, though Radcliffe defeated Princeton in 2009. The Black and White will face a Tiger Varsity 8 that has not posted a margin of victory smaller than 10 seconds so far this Spring (for a full preview from the Harvard Athletics website, click here).

Following their match-up against rival Radcliffe, the Tigers will return to Princeton to face 5th ranked Georgetown on April 30th.

With roughly six weeks to go before IRAs, the Tigers appear to be in a very good place, though they'll need to continue to build speed as crews like Wisconsin, only recently back on the water, will undoubtedly improve as the Spring progresses. Senior captains Lauren Sykora and Emma Bedard will be conscious of this, and Head Coach Paul Rassam will have the Tigers on track going into Championship season next month.

For more information, visit the official website of the Tiger Lights.

-RR

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