This weekend while most students are dragging their parents around Grounds, the University of Virginia women's rowing team will be competing in the world's largest two-day rowing event. The team will compete Sunday in the Head of the Charles Regatta on the Charles River in Boston.
While this is the first competition the team will engage in for the fall season, coach Kevin Sauer has high hopes for the weekend.
"Our expectations are to do as well as possible," Sauer said. "We would like to be nationally competitive, and obviously this weekend is a chance to conditionally see how we are doing."
The regatta includes nearly 30 different races and 7,500 rowers at various levels. The Cavalier women will be competing in the championship four event with 20 other competitors and the championship eight race, which features 46 teams total. Virginia will expect those two boats to perform well in the competition.
"Those two are the top boats in our program right now, and that may change as the year goes on or maybe even the next month goes on," Sauer said. "Those boats are ones, however, that we feel have done the best so far."
Despite high aspirations for the meet, Sauer knows that the competition will be fierce.
"All of the New England schools are going to be there: Princeton, Yale, Brown, Radcliffe [Harvard]; the ones that have done really well in the past are going to be there," Sauer said. "You are going to have a lot of good competitors."
The players are also looking forward to the matchups against the various schools.
"It's always exciting to race against other fast teams," junior Heather Gardner said. "It is also nice to go to a big race and be able to show off how hard we have worked."
Last year the team had a fourth place finish in the championship eight race and a disappointing 12th place finish in the championship four competition. Aside from just bringing talent and determination to this regatta, the Cavaliers are focusing on an improvement from last year's performance for the whole season.
"We didn't do very well at the end of last year, and we are trying to look at it from the standpoint of what we need to do better as a team," Sauer said. "Last year was the first year we didn't compete in the NCAA championships ever, and that is something we would like to rectify, and I think the kids are hungry, and they are training hard and doing a great job at practice. We have a very competitive squad"
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