NCAA CHAMPIONSHIPS
NCAA BREAKTHROUGH!
Hopefully everyone is still basking in the glow of the team’s remarkable achievement!
First, if you were watching the event, the 1V4 came first, unlike the order of events in the semis, where the fours came at the end. In the 1V4 final, the Stanford Women fought valiantly, racing alongside Texas and Yale. Yale had placed ahead of Stanford in the heat and was reportedly the top boat in the 1V4 class. But we know Texas has a reputation for finishing strong, and that came out loud and clear in this first Grand Final. The boats were all unusually close for a 1V4 event for a large part of the first half of the race, with Yale in the lead, before Texas began to assert itself with their overall team’s signature second 1,000m push. Meanwhile, Brown was in lane 1, mostly rowing its own plan. Between Brown’s singular focus and the brutality of the middle lanes, eventually the Stanford 1V4 moved from a solid 3d place to finish 4th, with Brown edging them out at the far corner of the course. While likely a disappointment for the Stanford 1V4, they still contributed an important 19 points to the overall Stanford effort. In the 1V4, placings are only separated by 1 point, and the gap is higher in the 2V8 and 1V8. And, Princeton placed 6th, earning 17 points which helped reduce their total team points potential.
This was going to set up a very exciting 2V8 race, which came next. First, a quick correction from a previous email. We said the Stanford 2V8 had defeated UW in the PAC-12s, but this was an error; they had placed 2nd to UW by more than 2.5 seconds, who won the other 2V8 semi at NCAAs. So, this set up an interesting rematch, with UW and Stanford in the middle lanes (3 and 4), while Cal and Texas sat in lanes 2 and 5. From a points standpoint, Princeton was a little diminished from the 1V4, and in the 2V8 both Princeton and Yale were in outside lanes, indicating their 3rd place finishes in the semis. So, it seemed Texas was the team to watch. They had placed 2nd to UW in the semis, so they had the potential to place high and earn more overall points for the Longhorns.
Thankfully, Stanford’s already-strong 2V8 clearly had improved since PAC-12s and came out of the gates roaring. In fact, unlike earlier finals at NCAAs, this one was unusually close in the first 750, but with Stanford starting to show some differentiation at that point. Unfortunately for Texas, the course had a large flock of geese that were mostly in their lane and did not move until impacted by the Longhorns boat. While Stanford had a great race, placing first and beating UW, Texas placed 6th, a devastating result for their point total and clearly impacted by the obstacles on the course. They took the honorable high road and did not formalize a protest, a good gesture that hopefully will be remembered in the future. While it is impossible to know the outcome, we still think Stanford would have been very competitive for the championship, particularly due to the 1V8 peaking at the right time. And, the two winners of the 2V8 semis (Stanford and UW) still placed 1st and 2nd in the final.
At this point, the points total was very interesting. Of what seemed like the four contenders on Saturday, Stanford was now sitting at 63, Yale at 59, Texas at 56 and Princeton at 53. But even UW and Cal were still in the fight, accruing 57 and 56 points, respectively. With 66 1V8 points on the line, and 3-point decrements for lower placements, there were more threats out there. Thankfully, the 1V8 pulled out in front approaching the middle of the race and never looked back, placing first by nearly 2.5 seconds! In fact, UW placed a very strong 2nd from lane 5, catapulting them to 2nd place overall. Texas placed 5th without any obstacles in this race, putting them in a points tie with Yale but in 4th place overall by virtue of the 1V8 tiebreaker (Yale placed 6th).
This second-ever NCAA championship was truly a total-team effort, the half competing at NCAAs and the half who stayed home, as well as the optimal peaking on race weekend. Below are all of the worth-reading recaps of the race, but we’ll mention a quote from Coach Byrnes: “At NCAAs, a lot has to go your way. . . Across the three days of racing, there are just so many highs and there's a bunch of lows and it's about riding it out. . . We talk a lot about how it is not about 23, it's about 43. . . It's about everyone contributing and everyone making an effort. The team believes in that and they push, and if someone goes down, someone steps in that role. The practices are unbelievably competitive, and they thrive in that environment.”. For anyone who has rowed, they know that success is never about any single person in the boat, and that insight is applicable to the entire team as well.
Congratulations again to the #1 Stanford Women!
