By
Scott Eisen
May 18, 2009
The UW men’s and women’s crews showed they still have a lot of work to do in gearing up for the postseason after a disappointing Pac-10 championships this weekend.
Facing 100-degree weather on Lake Natoma, home of the Sacramento State Aquatic Center, the No. 9 UW varsity women finished in a disappointing fourth place, losing to the top two teams in the nation — Stanford and California — as well as No. 13 Oregon State.
“It was a really great race,” women’s coach Bob Ernst said. “It was really close all the way down to the end, and Oregon State just touched us out. Credit to them; they rowed a great last half of the race.”
While the women’s novice eight put together a dominating win without ever giving up the lead, the rest of the women struggled. Failing to win in the second varsity eight and varsity four races, the Huskies may have done barely enough to sneak into the 16-team NCAA championships.
Ernst said he believes the Huskies deserve a spot but mentioned that “there’s always a possibility” they won’t make it. The team will find out Tuesday afternoon if they have been selected.
The men’s varsity eight race was reminiscent of the Huskies’ entire season leading up to the championships. Although the UW, Stanford and California have had close races all year, the Golden Bears were victorious this time around, beating the third-place Huskies by less than two seconds.
Not all news was bad for the Husky crew program, as the rest of the UW men demonstrated depth that few others in the nation can match. The freshman eight continued its dominance with an almost nine-second victory, staying undefeated on the season. The varsity four and second varsity eight boats were victorious as well.
However, since men’s crew is not an NCAA-sponsored sport, the No. 2 UW men will be training for the Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championships scheduled for June 4-6.
Reach reporter Scott Eisen at sports@dailyuw.com.
2 Comments
#1 Rachel P.
on May 18, 2009 at 8:44 a.m.(Seattle, WA | UW Community)
What's really disappointing is the lack of support that UW-based newspapers such as the Daily seem to give the crew team. There are perfunctory articles featured before and after every race but with the winning history of UW rowing (the sports team that has earned the most ever national championships for UW) you'd think that there would be a grand journalistic opportunity to actually write something interesting about the team. The features on the athletes are nice, but it would be even better (and better journalism) to not recycle text and pictures from the SAME athlete interviews two years in a row. Good journalists aim to first understand before they report, something that I truly feel the Daily has failed at.
I think the part of the recent article that I am most offended by is the title "UW crews disappoint at Pac-10's." While other sports get much more credit for their efforts (and acheivements) this is just a slap in the face. On the women's side the team placed better than they did last year, one of the major goals for the team since last spring. While the article mentions that the top-two ranked women's crews are in the Pac-10 (Stanford and Cal-Berkeley) it fails to connect the dots in that competetively placing third or fourth behind these teams puts the Hukies in contention for placing at the National level as well. As for the men, I hardly think that winning gold in 3 out of 4 races is a disappointment. Also, as a reader of the Daily, I'm sure I would be interested in an article that makes note of how out of the 9 athletes in the men's varsity boat, two athletes trained with the Olympic-gold medal winning Canadian National Team (with one traveling to Beijing as an alternate for the crew), two athletes won gold this past summer for the U.S. at U-23 Nationals, and two more earned gold with the Canadian U-23 team at the Henley Regatta in England, one of the premeire rowing events in the world. Now, I hate to dump on another team because I know they're trying their best, but if the football team even came close to this kind of acheivement there would be hallelujahs being sung from the rooftops.
It's not that I'm upset that more people don't follow rowing or recognize the program as one of the University of Washington's finest athletic institutions, it's that the Daily has done such a poor job reporting on and giving the rest of the student community a fair depiction of the rowing team and its players. Scott, please think again before you add the word "disappoint" in the title of any article. Not only are there more journalistic and creative ways of titling a piece, but the team being reported on certainly deserves more than a quick glance at rankings and finish times and some lifted quotes from gohuskies.com.
#2 David V.
on May 18, 2009 at 12:12 p.m.(Seattle, WA | UW Community)
Winning every event except getting 3rd in the 1V is pretty terrible I guess. Here's another great article.
SCOTT EISEN DISAPPOINTS AS A COLUMNIST
Writer shows that he still has a lot of work to do in gearing up for actually understanding the sport he's reporting on after a disappointing article about PAC10s this weekend.
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