BETHLEHEM, Pa. - The Lehigh rowing team will wrap up its spring season this weekend when it competes in the prestigious Dad Vail Regatta on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. The regatta is set for Friday and Saturday. For a second straight year, Saturday’s finals will air live on 6ABC in Philadelphia and streamed worldwide on ESPN3.com.
The Aberdeen Dad Vail Regatta is the largest collegiate regatta in the United States, with over 100 colleges and Universities from the U.S. and Canada. Thousands of student athletes gather to compete during the weekend of the second Saturday of May. For more information on the Dad Vail Regatta, please click here. Complete heat sheets for the weekend can be found here.
“I think the team is pretty focused on the task and looking to continue to improve on what’s been a season of improvement,” said Lehigh head coach Brian Conley. “Despite the men having a little more time off, I think the added preparation will and can only help in their racing this weekend. The women are coming off a performance at the Patriot League Championships that showed the improvement from last season in a definitive way. That’s allowed the team to go into this weekend with a great deal of confidence.”
The women’s team is coming off a fifth-place finish in the Patriot League Championships two weekends ago, Lehigh’s highest finish in recent memory. Both the Varsity Four and Freshmen Eight finished fifth to lead the way.
“I think there’s an air of excitement for the team in regards to racing against crews from the west coast, Canada and everywhere else,” said Conley. “For us, we’re realizing that the nervousness we feel on the starting line just shows that we truly care and are able to start channeling that energy into our racing.”
The men’s squad hasn’t been in action in nearly a month, when it captured the River Cup against Lafayette on Apr. 21.
“To be successful, the team is looking to make it to Saturday,” said Conley. “Any team that makes it to Saturday has shown they deserve to be at the regatta. From there, we need to reach beyond ourselves for something that we have trained for and believed could happen. Lehigh has seen a great deal of success with many of its teams - having improved seasons compared to recent years - and we want to add to that sense of pride in the athletic department.
“To finish on a high note is every team's goal, so we need to go out there with bigger goals and dreams than our competitors so when we look back, we know we left everything on the water,” Conley continued.
Check back to Lehighsports.com for complete results from the regatta.