Thursday, October 23, 2008
UD Men's Crew Competes at 44th Annual Head of the Charles Regatta
This Saturday and Sunday October 18-19, the Blue Hens traveled to the Charles River in Boston, MA to compete in the 44th annual Head of the Charles Regatta.
The Men's Heavyweight Four competed in the Collegiate Four event at 3:25 p.m. on Saturday afternoon. Starting 25th and coxed by Liz Oehmke, Frank Sneeringer, Alex McCreery, Rafael Jiminez, and Kyle Thomas (stroke) placed 19th in their competition with a time of 18:01.934. The crew completed their 5000m only 2 seconds behind Clemson University and about eight seconds ahead of Georgia State University.
University of Delaware Men's Crew Alumni gathered together again to race this Saturday in the Head of the Charles Club Eight event. With bow #26, the crew (16:41.126) placed 46 out of approximately 69 entrants. The club events Head of the Charles Regatta is one of the most anticipated events because of the diversity of the crews, including alumni boats from collegiate programs. We hope that Alumni of our team are able to continue the tradition of racing at this prestigious regatta for many years to come.
On Sunday, the bow #18 Men's Varsity Heavyweight Eight (15:43.239) took 12th place in the collegiate eight events. The Hens were almost five seconds ahead of 13th place Lehigh, and about 30 seconds off first place Williams (15:11.487). This shows improvement in this year's program, as last year's results showed about a minute difference from UD's time and the first place time. "Despite poor conditions we are pleased with our progress from last year. These aren't ideal racing conditions but everyone had to fight their way down the course. As a team, we are going to take what we learned here this weekend and use that to our advantage in future races", said Steve Norman, Team Vice-President.
The UD Lightweight Four (17:41.710) earned 9th place in a field of 15 in the Men's Lightweight Four event. They finished within five seconds of Harvard (7th) and Cornell (8th).
The last race of the day consisted of the UD Lightweight Eight racing in the Lightweight Eight event. This event, like all Lightweight events at the Charles, is open to all lightweight programs, both club and collegiate. Bow #12 University of Delaware Lightweight Eight earned 14th place (15:41.157) out of approximately 21 competitors.