As coach Kevin Sauer watched from the sandy beach at Lake Monticello, the Virginia Rowing team reasserted its dominance in the ACC, sweeping the races at Saturday's conference championships.
The Cavaliers have now won four consecutive ACC championships and will once more turn their attention to the national scene, where they have struggled losing nearly every race against powerhouse conferences, PAC 10 and Big 10 schools this year.
"Yeah, we've lost to those crews, but they're all top 10 in the nation," Sauer said. "And we only lost to Ohio State and Michigan by a few seconds."
Although the Cavaliers were swept by both of these Big 10 teams, junior rower Catelyn Coyle said she didn't think the team's moral was hurt.
"No one seemed to come back discouraged at all," she said.
Virginia has dominated the ACC for the past four years, but Sauer said he believes ACC championships are no longer a sure thing for the Cavaliers.
"No, if you look at the times this morning" the first and second varsity eight races were close, Sauer said. "But those boats really rose to the occasion this afternoon. The kids really responded well, and that's encouraging."
The Cavaliers hosted ACC championships this year at Lake Monticello's 2000-meter course, rather than at Rivanna Resivoir where their other home meets are held.
Despite some close races Saturday morning, Virginia responded to coach Sauer's challenges and won every finals race in the afternoon by two or three lengths of open water.
The talent in the ACC is so stratified that with the exception of the Novice race, all races ended with Virginia in first, Duke in second, Clemson in third and Carolina last. The Cavaliers finished the Championships with a total of 40 team points, 11 ahead of the second place team Duke. Clemson finished with 21 and Carolina with 10.
The Virginia Novice-eight beat Clemson in the finals by 8.7 seconds finishing ata time of 7:02. The varsity four final came next and the Cavaliers posted a time of 7:44.0 crossing the finish line 13.5 seconds ahead of Duke. Virginia's varsity four was comprised of a hodgepodge of rowers due to injury.
"We were stacked" in terms of athletic ability, Coyle said. The four boat has "got a lot of injured people, so we haven't practiced much together, so that was like the third time we've been out."
The second varsity eight posted the most lopsided victory, finishing 15.2 seconds ahead of the second place Blue Devils coming in at 6:52.9, a time better than all the opposing varsity-one boats. Virginia's first varsity boat came in at 6:47.9 while second place Duke finished at 6:55.2.
Virginia rowing's dominance of the ACC draws few parallels, save men's swimming in which the Cavaliers have won five consecutive conference titles, but unlike swimming, ACC women's rowing includes only four teams.
The Cavaliers have only two meets in which to turn their luck around against non-conference, top-10 opponents. After a fourth place finish in NCAA championships a year ago, anything below a top five finish would be a disappointment.
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