Crew: Crews ‘Pull for the Cure’ on Charles

The four teams participated in the second annual “Pull for a Cure” race as a part of the Head of the Charles regatta. Over the past few weeks, the men and women’s crew teams have collectively raised over $19,000 in donations to the American Cancer Society.

A Brown University rower founded Pull for a Cure in fall 2009 in honor of his mother’s and sister’s defeat of breast cancer. In the first year, the Brown crew team alone raised over $25,000 for the cause. The next year, Princeton, Yale, Holy Cross and Penn State joined the race, and the five teams raised over $85,000. This season the race has expanded to 18 teams from 10 different schools or rowing clubs and raised a total of $90,854.33. The race takes place in October in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month and is sponsored by the Head of the Charles Regatta and the American Cancer Society.

This year, the men’s heavyweight crew raised $7,465, making them the team to raise the third highest amount for breast cancer research. The women’s openweight crew was right behind them, raising $7,096. The lightweight men raised $3,120 and lightweight women raised $2,545. The Brown men’s crew raised the highest amount with a whopping $34,457.

According to junior openweight Molly Hamrick, the captains of each team were responsible for leading fundraising efforts, and each rower asked family and friends for donations. “We raced in pink tank tops to represent our support and participation for Pull for the Cure,” Hamrick said.

The crew teams will continue to take donations until their annual Princeton Chase next weekend.

The team competed in seven events at the regatta. On Saturday, in the club eight men’s division, the Tigers finished second out of 39 teams, only one second behind first place Brown.

On Sunday, Princeton opened with the championship women’s fours events with openweight rowers, junior Nicole Bielawski, senior Emily Gass, senior Margaret Daly, freshman Faith Richardson and freshman coxswain Olivia Sayvetz taking 14th place. Next, the men competed in the championship eights race, finishing 11th out of 34 boats.

The openweight women’s eights boat, which won EAWRC and NCAA championships last spring, took a sixth place finish despite having lost many members of the championship boat to graduation. However, the women said they were hoping to do better.

“While we were disappointed with our own performance, I do believe a lot was learned from the race itself,” Hamrick said. “There were a lot of expectations going into the championshop eight race, with our crew starting first, and it was very telling to see how we handled the pressure, especially with a crew as talented as Virginia starting directly behind us.”

“It was a worthwhile experience,” Hamrick added, “that I hope we take into account as we continue to race this fall and this year.”

The lightweight women’s fours boat finished in fourth place in their race, which was the highest finish for a collegiate boat. The lightweight men’s eights boat finished in third place, finishing behind only the US National Rowing team and the reigning EARC champion, Harvard.

Despite finishing the day with a scratched race by the lightweight women’s eights boat, Princeton managed to come in fourth place overall at the regatta.

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“The Charles certainly showed that we are going to have to continue to work hard if we are going to want to see satisfactory results at the end of the season,” Hamrick said.