Lightweight Rowers Head to Princeton While Heavyweights Compete at Home

All three Columbia rowing teams will be in action this week, with the lightweights and women hitting the road and the heavyweights holding down the fort at home. The lightweight men will head to Princeton, N.J. to take on Princeton and Georgetown. The women travel to Princeton, N.J. as well, but will race against Princeton and Rutgers. The heavyweight men welcome MIT and Holy Cross to the Orchard Beach Lagoon in Pelham, N.Y. to race for the Alumni Cup. All of the races are this Saturday, with starting times of 10 a.m., 10:45 a.m., and 10:25 a.m. respectively.

For the lightweights, this will be the team’s first official 2,000-meter race of the season.
“Princeton is always a tough opponent, Georgetown’s been a pretty solid team in the years I’ve been here,” senior lightweight rower Jason Novick said.
Novick also feels that the spring break trip the crew team took to Florida will benefit the team.

“Our intensity and stroke rating is higher,” he said. “We’ve been trying to come together as a crew.”

The Lions are coming off an exhibition Governor’s Cup matchup against Florida Tech in which they were victorious against the Panthers, though they were a bit behind the pace of the Lions’ heavyweight squad, which participated as well.

“Winning that race [against Florida Tech], it does boost confidence,” Novick said. “It’s always nice to win a race—it told us some information on what times we can pull on a 2,000-meter race.”

“One of our training tools is racing the heavyweights,” he said. “This year they’re really fast.”

In fact, they were the fastest squad on the water during the Governor’s Cup, clocking in at approximately 5:57 with the lightweights 10.4 ticks behind.

After the Florida Tech warm-up, Novick is hungry for some league action, even though the team doesn’t begin rowing for cups until next weekend.

“These are the schools we’re going to be racing in the Eastern Sprints in May. Whether it’s a cup or not doesn’t really matter,” Novick said.

The first cup of the year for the lightweight team is the Wit Cup next Saturday, April 12, at the Orchard Beach Lagoon. The Lions will take on Navy and Rutgers.