Season Begins With Varied Results for Men's Rowing

The lightweight crew team had mixed results over spring break. For the second straight year, Virginia swept the Lions' varsity in the 1000-meters, winning all five races. Columbia was able to bounce back on Saturday at the FIT Invitational, defeating Florida Tech in the 2000-meter 6:00.0-6:09.1.

At least part of the poor performance of most of the team must be attributed to the fact that the team was not able to get practice on the water, as the Harlem River has been icy.

"The biggest reason for our loss was that we had only been on the water for three days while UVA was on the water for probably three weeks," said sophomore Nick LaCava. "But we've improved a lot over spring break down in Florida."

Against UVA, the Lions' second varsity came up strong, winning four out of five races, while the first freshman eights won three out of five. However, the Lions' third varsity fours lost three out of four races, and the second freshman fours lost all five.

Motivated by the loss to UVA, the lightweight crew put in a great effort and took advantage of the fact that they finally had good on-water practice conditions. "We practiced twice a day in between both matches," said LaCava.

Next on the slate for the lightweight rowing team are matches against Princeton and Georgetown on March 31 at Princeton, NJ.

The heavyweights picked up better results over break, as head coach Mike Zimmer led the team to two victories at the FIT invitational on Saturday, besting Notre Dame 6:06.0-6:18.7 and Florida Tech 5:58.0-6:04.6.

Junior Steve La Perla was happy with the effort. "I thought we had a pretty good week of training and the victory felt good," he said. "It was satisfying because we fixed some things we needed to work on against Notre Dame and Florida, so it was a good learning experience."

Although impressed with the victory, La Perla knows that the team can't get too content. "We need to continue to practice hard and stay focused, as we have some good crews coming up ahead of us," he said. "If we train hard, we should be able to have some more good performances."

The heavyweight squad has the Maxwell Stevenson Cup this Saturday, in which it will row against Navy and George Washington.