Penn women finish 11th in school’s first appearance at the NCAA rowing championships

The Penn women’s rowing team made history this weekend as it raced in the NCAA championships for the first time. The Quakers finished 11th out of 22 teams in the overall standings. Each of the Quakers’ three boats raced four times on the 200-meter course at Nathan Benderson Park in Sarasota, Fla.

“[It was a] phenomenal team performance,” coach Wesley Ng said. “I think we learned a ton by going through the full experience.”

» READ MORE: Penn women's rowing qualifies for first ever NCAA championships

Texas won the varsity eight grand final and the national championship for the second straight year, edging Stanford via a tiebreaker based on the varsity eight victory. Stanford finished second last year, too.

In addition to Penn, Princeton (third), Yale (fifth), Brown (seventh), and Rutgers (13th) qualified for the nationals.

The competition began Friday. The two fastest finishers in each of the preliminary races automatically qualified for the A/B semifinals. The remaining boats raced in a runoff repechage, a race in which the boats that failed to qualify from the initial heats compete to earn the remaining spots in the next round. The top two boats in each repechage also qualified for the A/B semifinals on Saturday. The remaining boats in the repechage settled for the C/D semifinals.

Both Penn eights finished third in the prelims and secured repechage victories to qualify for the A/B semifinals. The Penn four took fifth in its preliminary race and finished fourth in the repechage, relegating the boat to the C/D semifinals.

In Saturday’s semifinals, the top three finishers advanced to the upper finals while the remaining three boats raced in the lower final. For contenders at the A/B semifinals like the two Penn eights, the finishers were split into the grand and petite finals. The C/D semifinalists made up the third and fourth finals.

The final races took place on Sunday. In the varsity eight petite finals, Penn vied for second position with Ohio State for most of the course. In the final 500 meters, Yale, which had kept a three-second distance, fell behind and Ohio State took the lead. Penn stayed the course for a third-place finish in the race and ninth-place finish overall.

The Quakers four grabbed a fifth-place finish and placed 17th overall. Finally, the second varsity eight, which was seeded No. 6 in the country, took fifth in the petite final and finished 11th overall.

When calculating final team scores, the NCAA took the final standings of each boat into account, placing weight on the two eights. With 72 points, Penn tied for 11th place, winning the tiebreaker (the better finish in the varsity eight race) with Southern Methodist. Penn narrowly missed out on a place in the top 10, finishing one point behind Michigan.

Penn will have designs on returning to nationals next season, with the vast majority of the team — 20 of 23 athletes — due to return.

“We will bring in a class of 16 really talented folks who are really hungry to make an even bigger splash nationally,” Ng said.

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