Penn women’s crew to race at nationals for the first time this weekend

Three Penn boats will race at the NCAA regatta this weekend in Sarasota, Fla.

Penn’s second varsity eight receiving the bronze medal at the Ivy League championships. (Penn Athletics)Read moreprovided

by Melanie Heller, For The Inquirer

Published May 25, 2022, 8:22 p.m. ET

For the first time in program history, the seventh-ranked Penn women’s rowing team is bringing a full complement of boats to the NCAA championship Friday through Sunday at Nathan Benderson Park in Sarasota, Fla.

“I think this is the fastest crew that we produced in the last 40 years,” coach Wesley Ng said.

Although the Quakers sent one boat to NCAAs in 1998, this is the first time in program history that a full lineup — two eights and one four — will race at nationals.

“This year coming in, we all started the season and started training and we were like, ‘We want to be the first team to be able to take it to the NCAAs,’” junior captain Josie Konopka said. “As we started getting races, we were seeing the results and we’re like, ‘OK, maybe we can actually do this.’”

Penn will not be the only member of the Ivy League in Sarasota. No. 4 Princeton secured the conference’s automatic bid as the winner of the varsity eight race at the Ivy Championships earlier this month. No. 3 Yale and No. 5 Brown also punched tickets with at-large bids into the regatta.

The latest Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association poll ranks these four schools in the nation’s top 10, making the Ivy League the best-represented conference in the top half of the poll. At the national tournament, however, only the Pac-12 beats out the Ivies in numbers. Five Pac-12 teams — No. 2 Stanford, No. 8 Washington, No. 10 Cal-Berkeley, No. 13 Oregon State, and No. 16 Southern Cal — will be racing in Sarasota this weekend.

It was not all smooth sailing for the Quakers heading into the season. With its boathouse being renovated, the team had to relocate to the west side of the Schuylkill and keep cover under tents throughout the season. Hurricane Ida also wreaked havoc at the onset of the season by destroying half of the team’s boats.

“Since then, it has really been a steady, hard progression from a lot of people, throughout all our different classes that have made an enormous contribution,” Ng said. “It’s almost been unrecognizable because the day-to-day progress is solid. But when you really look at it from where we started in September to where we are now, it really speaks to their sustained effort.”

Konopka, the stroke for the first varsity eight boat, is a second-generation Penn women’s rowing legacy.

“My mom was on the team when she was in college,” she said. “She is insanely proud, and I know her and the other alumni are right behind us.”

Although Penn’s commencement ceremony was two weeks ago, the team’s class of 2022 will have one last chance to don the red and blue.

“Because they had COVID, they kind of missed two years of regular rowing,” Konopka said. “I think the opportunity to go all the way and be able to continue the season after graduation is really special to them.”

The 22-team field is made up of the 11 conference champions along with 11 at-large bids from across the country. Penn has the ninth, sixth, and 17th seeds in the first eight, second eight, and four, respectively.