PAC-12 CHAMPIONSHIPS (W)

The PAC-12 2023 Championship is in the books and what an amazing experience for Stanford Rowing. While West Coast rowing is obviously not as deep as that of our Eastern peers, we are very lucky to have some of the nation's top competitors here to push us to new heights. While the goal is always to win, no matter what, conference championships are also an important progress check before the end of the season.

The #4 Stanford Women had an amazing championship, winning it back-to-back for the first time since PAC-12s were inaugurated (from the previous Western Sprints/PCRCs).  While they were favored to repeat, we knew that Washington and Cal would not make it easy for them. At first, things seem to be going well. Stanford won the novice/frosh eight and 3V8 eight events. Then the 1V4 took complete control of their race, and won by a healthy margin of open water - 11 seconds. After the first 750m, any time the camera was on them it looked like they were the only ones on the water. After this race, if the 2V8 won, then the 1V8 could secure the team trophy even with a second place finish. Also, the 2V8 had beaten Washington and Cal at the San Diego Crew Classic, so it was definitely a feasible outcome. However, there was clearly some re-tooling going on with those teams, since they pushed Stanford to the end. Washington hung tough and eventually overtook Stanford for the first place finish. While not ideal, it is still great to experience top competition to know what you need to work on before NCAAs, and we're sure Coach Byrnes will watch the replay very closely for insights.

While there was some pressure now on the 1V8 to win outright, they easily rose to the challenge. After a fast start where all teams were mostly level, the 1V8 Stanford Women progressively built a lead over the field and never looked back. They won by more than five seconds, and were very convincing. Based on cMax they were expected to be about five seconds ahead of UW and they delivered. They will need every second of speed improvement in order to fend off upstart #2 Princeton and finally defeat #1 Texas. In the Big 12 Championship Texas beat Alabama by approximately the cMax expected margin of 19 seconds, so it is hard to know if the Longhorns experienced any improvement in recent weeks.

Read the goStanford recap here.