Facing a heavily stacked conference field, the No. 8 Virginia women's rowing team delivered a stellar performance at Lake Wheeler this weekend to claim second place overall at the 2026 ACC Championship — the team's third consecutive silver.
The Cavaliers put together a strong, consistent weekend in Raleigh, N.C., securing 118 team points to earn the conference runner-up trophy. West Coast powerhouse and defending ACC Champion No. 3 Stanford swept all five Grand Finals to come out on top with 132 points, while fellow ACC newcomer No. 6 California placed third with 108.
The story of the weekend for the Cavaliers was not just the hardware, but how they outpaced their projections. Entering the regatta, several of Virginia's core boats were seeded below the top spots — yet the Cavaliers defied those expectations on Saturday and advanced all five boats to the Grand Finals, capturing hard-fought silver medals in three of the five races.
Virginia's top boats hit the water to turn premier races into direct battles with the reigning champions, getting across the finish line ahead of the second-seeded Golden Bears in the First and Second Varsity Eights, and the First Varsity Four — all races where the Cavaliers had been seeded third in pre-regatta standings.
In the Varsity Eight, coxed by sophomore Brie Joe, the Cavaliers put together their most impressive piece of the spring. Shaking off the lower pre-regatta seed, Virginia surged past the field to finish second with a time of 6:15.380 — comfortable gapping third-place California at 6:19:390 and fourth-place Syracuse at 6:19.830 while narrowing the distance to Stanford at 6:10.230.
The Second Varsity Eight followed a similar script — with a lineup holding a blend of veteran presence and fresh talent, the Cavaliers overperformed to lock in a silver medal in 6:22.810, holding off a competitive Syracuse crew by nearly five seconds.
Virginia's Varsity Four completed the crew's silver sweep of the NCAA-scoring classes. The boat clocked a 7:12.590 to fend off the Golden Bears at 7:14.690 in a tight battle through the 2,000 meters.
In the lower-scoring events, the Third Varsity Eight provided the most dramatic finish, engaging in a fierce three-way sprint that ended in the Cavaliers crossing the line at 6:40.040 to secure bronze — missing out on the silver medal to California by an amazingly slim margin of just three one-hundredths of a second, and beating North Carolina by just over four tenths of a second. The Second Varsity Four added to the team's point total with a resilient fourth-place finish.
Virginia's excellence was recognized off the water as well. Freshman rower Georgia Allen, who held down the 7-seat in the silver medal 2V8, was named ACC Newcomer of the Year. On the All-ACC teams, senior Elsa Hartman and sophomores Flynn Greene and Paula Lutz earned First-Team honors, while Joe was a Second-Team selection for the second year in a row.
The focus now pivots to the national stage. While missing out on the ACC's automatic qualifying bid, the Cavaliers’ dominant regular season and runner-up finish at the conference championship proves their strength — Virginia was selected for an at-large bid Tuesday.
The team will travel to Lake Lanier in Gainesville, Ga., for the NCAA Championship from May 29-31.
The next two weeks in Charlottesville will be about closing the margins — Virginia can very well continue to rise if it can find a few fractional adjustments and execute clean pieces on Lake Lanier, something that Coach Wesley Ng is aware of.
“There is still more speed to discover in the next two weeks," Ng said.
A five-second gap behind a program like Stanford is formidable, but the Cavaliers have continued to push past expectations all season. Any team able to stand on the ACC podium must have synchronized, elite speed — and that will have to continue into the end of May if the Cavaliers want to hunt down a national podium finish.
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