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Athletic News Detail

Raiders Crew place second in Lightweight fours at nation’s largest collegiate rowing event

Published: 05/16/2012 Bookmark and Share
Raiders Crew place second in Lightweight fours at nation’s largest collegiate rowing event

Philadelphia--The MSOE rowing team competed at the nation’s largest collegiate rowing event, The Aberdeen Dad Vail Championships, this past weekend in Philadelphia and did not leave the shores of the Schuylkill River empty handed. The Raider’s lightweight four boat took second place overall, the highest varsity finish of any boat in the school’s history.  

The winner of the James J. Lynch Trophy was the University of Chicago with a time of 06:54.428, the only boat to surpass the MSOE mark of 06:56.019 in that race. The field was rounded out by the University of Minnesota (3rd, 07:02.364), University of Virginia (4th, 07:07.489) the University of Delaware (5th, 07:07.768) and the University of California, Berkeley (6th, 07:08.548).

To reach the final, the Raiders raced earlier that morning and placed second in their heat with a  time of 06:06:41.175, behind the University of Delaware boat (06.40.309) and ahead of the University of Rochester (3rd, 06:41.817), Iona College (4th, 6:43.575) New York  Maritime, (5th, 06:55.221) and Mercyhurst University (6th, 06:59.513). The final was their third heat at the event.

Jon Allen (stroke), Ben Lang (3 seat), Erik Winer (2 seat), Luke Engebretson (bow) and Rachel Connon (coxswain), manned the second place boat, coached by Chuck Stollenwerk.  Winer and Connon were on the MSOE novice eight- man crew that won the Brendan Lynch Cup in 2009 for MSOE’s first-ever win at the Dad Vail championships.

“With the lightweight four, I knew we had the talent right away”, said Stollenwerk. “It was a matter of coordinating the strokes, taken with proper preparation for the optimization of the speed at the right time.”

The MSOE program, only in their fifth year of varsity competition, qualified two of their four boats into the finals at the nationally recognized event which touted 1118 colleges and universities from United States and Canada.  The finals were broadcasted live on www.ESPN3.com.