April 25, 2007
Washington, D.C. - The Georgetown University men's lightweight crew traveled to Philadelphia, Pa. to compete against Penn and Princeton for the Wood-Hammond Trophy on the Schuylkill River this past Saturday. Two weeks after losing in a tight race with Princeton, the Hoyas were victorious over both the Tigers and the Quakers in the three-team regatta. The win gives Georgetown a #3 national ranking in the EARC coach's poll.
Georgetown won the first varsity competition in a time of 5:35.2, while Princeton finished second in 5:37.4. Both teams finished ahead of Penn, who took third in 5:43.0. "After racing Princeton earlier this season in the Fosburgh Cup, we knew they were a very fast crew and would be tough to beat, and Penn is consistently strong, especially on their home course," said senior co-captain and varsity five-seat Michael McGrath (Fairfield, CT/Fairfield Prep). "The competition was fierce, just as we expected, and the race was tight all the way to the end. Finishing our duel racing schedule with a win gives us a great boost, but now the challenge is to refocus and work even harder during the upcoming weeks."
In the Junior Varsity, the Hoyas finished 6.2 seconds behind Princeton and 9.8 seconds ahead of Penn. "We put together a more complete race than we had been doing and beat Penn, while narrowing the margin on Princeton," said senior co-captain and junior varsity six-seat Patrick Sheridan (Pittsburgh, PA/Shady Side Academy). "It was a vast improvement over three weeks ago, when Princeton dominated from start to finish. Today, we were able to put more pressure on them and had a much closer race."
"The freshmen showed their dramatic week-to-week improvement in a hard-fought race too. It is good to see that we're all improving," said Sheridan.
"All of our crews raced well against seasoned opponents. I was pleased with the varsity result, and with the significant improvement of our lower boats, said Men's Lightweight Crew Coach Evans Liolin. "We've had a real team effort down at the boathouse."
