Ellington

How do you improve upon near-perfection?

That’s the question facing the UW men’s crew team entering this weekend’s Stanford Invitational in Redwood Shores, Calif., their first Pac-10 race of the season.

Last year, the UW men’s crew won the IRA championship in dominant fashion, sweeping all three eights-races and winning the open four. The only crew that did not win a gold medal was the varsity four, who took the silver. However, much will be different tomorrow as the men take on a talented Stanford crew.

“We have a different group this year than we had last year,” said UW men’s head crew coach Michael Callahan. “Last year’s group was dominated by seniors. … This group will be a lot of new people in the top eight.”

Factoring heavily into the Huskies’ success last year was a powerful freshman eight who finished the season undefeated. Callahan said one of the biggest challenges for this season is getting them to compete at the next level as sophomores.

“The goal of the year is to get the younger guys up to the varsity level,” he said. “They’re young and very talented, so now it’s a matter of getting them mentally focused and understanding the pressures and challenges of this kind of racing.”

Another goal is to turn an abundance of talented athletes into a cohesive unit.

“We definitely have a lot of pieces, and now we need to put those pieces into something that’s greater than the [sum of its parts],” Callahan said.

The UW women’s crew will also travel to Stanford this weekend. After a seventh-place finish at the NCAA championships last year, women’s crew coach Bob Ernst says this weekend’s races will be an effective measure of how his team is competing.

“We’re going to get a lot of feedback from this,” he said. “We get three good races in two days.”

“Good races” might be an understatement. UW is set to face off against defending NCAA champion Stanford in the first race of the regatta, followed by races against Wisconsin and Iowa.

The pairing against the home team is far from a coincidence.

“I intentionally called them and asked to race Stanford in the first race because I want to see where we are,” Ernst said. “You want to test your kids against the best people that you possibly can.”

Ernst hopes that the invitational will mark a promising start for his team.

“It takes 20 rowers and three really good coxswains to have a good team,” he said. “For us, it’s team development from now until the Pac-10 championships.”

Reach reporter Andrew Gospe at sports@dailyuw.com.