Men's heavyweight crew dominated the competition the first two weeks of the young season. The first varsity boat defeated its opponents, Navy and Rutgers, by an average of 15 seconds.
Saturday, Penn brought the Tigers back to reality.
Competing in the nation's oldest intercollegiate cup race, the Childs Cup, on the Harlem River against Columbia and Penn, Princeton found itself eight seats behind Penn after the race's initial 500 meters.
The Tigers (4-0 overall, 2-0 Ivy League) responded like the crew that went undefeated in the Ivy League last season, however, over the race's last 1500 meters, to claim their fifth consecutive cup. Princeton narrowly defeated the Quakers (1-1, 1-1) six minutes, 5.74 seconds to 6:06.47, while Columbia (3-2, 0-2) was a distant third at 6:34.53.
Shotgun start
"I think it was more of a fast start by Penn than a slow start by us," head coach Curtis Jordan said. "After that, we rowed well. I'm happy any time we beat Penn."
The Tigers pulled even with the Quakers at about the 800-meter mark and never looked back. Princeton held a two-seat lead at 1000 meters and was close to a length ahead at 1500 meters, before Penn closed the gap at the end.
"I would say we showed pretty good confidence to be able to pull through in the second 500 meters after being down by a significant margin," sophomore Paul Teti said.
The Tigers used the same lineup they used for Navy. It included Teti, seniors Chris Ahrens, Morgan Crooks, Marty Crotty and Sean Kammann, and juniors Matt Carlson, Jason Flickinger and Tom Welsh.
Sign of things to come
The close race should prepare Princeton for the remainder of its season as there probably will not be any more blowouts.
"The next few weekends with Harvard, Yale and Cornell will be as tough as the Penn race," Jordan said.
The second varsity heavyweight boat also won, defeating Penn by eight seconds and Columbia by 41 seconds.
The Princeton lightweight team (2-0) cruised to another easy win on Lake Carnegie. The first boat crushed Navy by 23 seconds, 6:03.82 to 6:26.19. The second and third varsity boats and the two freshman boats were also victorious by wide margins.
Pulling away
The first boat gained three seats at the start, broke contact around 500 meters and pulled away from there. The boat consisted of co-captains Simon Carcagno and Rob Milam, juniors Bill Golden, Jon Lawson, Jason Liddell and Dan Stout, and sophomores Zach Brown and Bill Fedyna.
"It was a pretty solid race, but not too competitive," Simon said. "We were pleased with how quick we were."
The freshman heavyweights rebounded from their disappointing loss to Rutgers a week ago with a strong race at Columbia. A close race for the first few hundred meters, Princeton eventually pulled away, defeating a good Penn team by nine seconds and Columbia by 17.
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