Despite some late lineup changes due to an illness among players, the Massachusetts women’s rowing team placed first in two small boat final events of the Knecht Cup in Cherry Hill, N.J. on Sunday.
The Minutewomen took the top three places in a photo-finish doubles race in the tournament, as Kendall Bennett and Michaela Streitfield led the 1-2-3 finish. In the singles race, Rachel Boudreau finished in first place for UMass, crossing five seconds before teammate Claudia Caballero-Larco who came in second.
UMass coach Jim Dietz said the team’s success the doubles and singles competitions was nothing new to the team.
“In the small boats we always do well,” Dietz said. “[Streifield and Bennett] do very well together.”
Dietz was more concerned with the varsity play in the large boats competition, as the squad took only 18th place out of 34 teams in the race, with the second varsity team finishing above them in 6th place.
“In our second boat I would say we did do pretty well,” Dietz said. “In our other boats though, we didn’t do too well. We were slower than I had hoped, especially in the varsity, and that was very disappointing.”
Going into the tournament, Dietz had very high hopes for the team. However, the illnesses contributed to a large set back in the eights race, as second-place singles finisher Caballero-Larco came down with a stomach virus and did not feel well enough to race for varsity in the eights. Dietz then had no choice but to double up races for a rower, and chosing Hannah Monahan to replace Caballero-Larco. At that point, Dietz’s expectations had dropped.
“Monahan had to double up.” He said. “That’s pretty tough, to have to finish up one race and hop into another boat and go do it again.”
Looking to get back on track in every aspect of racing, the team will face Connecticut on Tuesday. Dietz isn’t sure whether or not everyone on the team will be ready after such a strenuous event.
“It was an exhausting weekend,” he said. “Everybody should be fine, but I don’t think everyone will be 100 percent. [There was] a lot of racing, everybody raced at least three times, We had Patriot’s day off, we went easy [in practice], but we should be able to bounce back against UConn.”
Tom Mulherin can be reached at tmulheri.umass.edu.
