The cloudless sunny skies and cold, crisp water at Rivanna Reservoir Saturday kept memories of this winter's snow at bay as the women's crew team began its spring season, sweeping all races against Columbia and San Diego State.
Virginia finished last year with every boat ranked No. 1 in the Southern Region but finished fourth in NCAA championships in June.
This year, coach Kevin Sauer said he believes the Cavaliers are an exciting squad that can challenge for a national title.
"I'm really excited about this year," Sauer said. "They've got great chemistry, great attitudes. We've been working pretty hard and I think we've got a lot of talent."
Virginia got off to a good start Saturday with not a single boat finishing behind its opponent except the third novice boat, which finished five seconds behind Delaware's novice eight boat.
Virginia's dominance began in the eight boats at 10 a.m., when two novice eights for Virginia both finished ahead of Columbia. The story was the same for the second and third varsity teams, both of which finished a whopping 35.3 and 16.7 seconds in front of Columbia's second varsity eight. Virginia's second eight posted a time of 7:13.4, a full five seconds better than Columbia's varsity boat despite not racing it head-to-head. The best time of the day, however, was posted by Virginia's varsity eight boat, which finished just one second over the seven-minute mark.
Although the times themselves bear little importance, the fact that each boat posted similar times in their clobbering of San Diego State in the afternoon impressed Sauer.
"Times are not relevant because of the strong headwinds," he said. "You don't know how it effected things. One thing I was impressed with was that the Varsity and the 2-V both was that their times were very similar to this morning. I think they went faster in the afternoon because the headwind was stronger, so I was pleased with that."
The Cavaliers, as a premier team in the nation, are well out of league for San Diego State, whom Virginia has competed against early in the season for a few years.
"The last couple of years or so San Diego State has come over here and we've always been pretty successful," senior rower and team captain Claudia Durkin said. "We've never lost on our home course in the four years that I've been here, but that race went pretty well. We haven't raced a full 2-K since we've only been in the water for the past two weeks, so this was kind of a trial, but it went really well in the first race we had and we just kind of geared up for the second race and that turned out pretty well, too."
Last year's fourth place finish in NCAA championships was the result of season-long line-up changes and rower movement between boats. This year, however, Sauer said he hopes to gain the upper hand by having a strong varsity boat at the onset of the season.
"There seems to be some semblance of a separation right now," Sauer said. "They both look like they're going pretty fast, but there seems to be a little bit of difference between the varsity and the 2-V. I'll still make some changes if I think I can make the varsity a little faster or the 2-V faster with somebody from a four or something like that, but it probably bodes a little bit better for not tinkering as much."
Virginia now has two weeks to prepare for competition against strong PAC-10 and Big-10 schools at Stanford on March 29. Despite being a month and a half behind the West Coast teams in terms of water time, the Cavaliers are satisfied with their progress.
"I really am" happy with where the team is right now, Sauer said. "I'm not one to say a lot about that kind of stuff, but I really am happy."
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