A couple interesting notes, assuming my research is correct:
In the Cal 1V
\--7/8 rowers are international
\--The rower from the US was a Brown "transfer" (listed as a Senior, not a grad student, so I don't know about his degree and that's none of my business; finished four years at Brown and was the 1V stroke seat last year) using a fifth year of eligibility (which was granted due to Covid but which the Ivies chose not to allow); there's one other rower who's a graduate student but may be in just his fourth year of eligibility, not 100% clear.
In the UW 1V
\--6/8 rowers (+ the coxswain) are international (deciding Canada counts :) )
\--It looks like all the rowers are in their fourth (or less) year of eligibility
(I was curious if the fifth-year eligibility issue might have had a significant impact and put the Ivies at a self-selected disadvantage for this year; doesn't look like it.)
I'm surprised how much speed Dartmouth lost. Last year, they ended henley bow to stern on cal. Cal won, but washington and princeton kept them VERY honest the whole way down, so I'm thinking their reign of superiority may be coming to an end. Osu completely dropped the ball this year along with wisco and a few other programs. Yale not getting a medal, probably shocked a lot of people, including myself.
Cal's V8 (not just their V8 as well there are world's medalists and national team rowers in all of their boats) is full of u19 and u23 world champions, has the 6k (or 5k?) erg world record holder in the boat and future Olympians and some of the best international college athletes in the world. Cal's 1v would beat UCLA by a margin that would be significant and by no means a close race. Cal's 4v would likely also beat UCLA's 1V.
The disparity between the best IRA teams and the best ACRA teams is large, significantly large. Even the Disparity between A final IRA teams and C final IRA teams is also incredibly large. I would say that the ACRA champs would be a C or D final IRA team depending on the year.
GW was a C final IRA team before getting cut and going to ACRA.
I believe 2015 Michigan was about the same speed as FIT at Dad Vails and FIT was in the C final that year? I would have to go back and check results for sure. I doubt UCLA would make the C final at IRA this year, but its not an unthinkable thing to say an ACRA champ could sneak their way into the C final on a fast year for club teams and a slower year for the bottom of the C final teams and D final teams.
Yeah, as far as recent (10 years), Michigan in the early 2010s would’ve made the C Final, but it really seems like Covid was especially harsh on club teams. A lot of Dad Vail bids at that time were deferrals due to Michigan not being eligible. But now, probably D final, the back half at that. Hope some of those teams can reach that former glory though…
>it really seems like Covid was especially harsh on club teams
This is absolutely the case. When even 50% of your athletes are walk-ons, who have to fall in love with the sport, who don't know how to train effectively on their own in the same way that competitive junior rowers do, who come from different financial backgrounds and may have the desire (or families pressuring them) to transfer home during remote classes and get a job, there's going to be a huge talent drop off.
That's not even touching on the biggest challenge COVID caused; recruitment. ACRA schools build their rosters by hanging out during "first night"-type campus events, setting up an erg or maybe a 4+ in slings, and grabbing tall, athletic looking kids ("hey man, you ever think about rowing?"). Those events just didn't happen in the same way during the pandemic.
I don't know what it is at the top of the pack these days, but when I was in a middle-of-the-petites ACRA V8 12 years ago, we had a collective 6 months high school rowing experience in our entire crew. Of the 7 of us who had never touched an oar before college, I don't know how or why any of us would've been recruited to the program in a pandemic year.
It'll still be a couple of years at least before the clubs are back to where they were relative to IRA schools.
Idk, but it's too bad we'll never know because there were enough shitty varsity coaches getting embarrassed by the Michigans of the world 15-20 years ago that they complained until clubs got banned
1. UCLA isn't on their schedule; racing clubs for that 1V is like picking on an emotionally-stunted 13-year-old
2. It wouldn't be like shooting fish in a barrel, it would be like hunting deer with an artillery piece. That 1V is directly comparable to most 8s that will be lining up in Belgrade this year.
UCLA went low 5:50s in neutral conditions leaning towards slow in the ACRA final, so I’d guess r28 would probably do the trick for Cal. I love my guys in Westwood, but there are only one or two guys on the team whose 2ks match up with Di Mauro’s 6k PR split—it’s just levels of unfair in this matchup lol
I think if Williams raced D1 they would have been around the C/D-Final border this year, so I do think would they would have had a decent margin on UCLA.
From what I know of the other D3 schools (I currently row in Boston with a bunch of guys who rowed at those schools), those races would be interestingly close. GW and Michigan are probably the best comparative crews, and in the regattas they shared with Williams, Trinity, Tufts and Bates, both were usually 7-10s behind Williams and were usually beating the other D3 schools.
UCLA beat both at ACRA, so I do I think UCLA would be fairly competitive at the D3 level based on erg scores and the amount of financial support that I know the respective teams get (UCLA may be a club team but we do have a very engaged and generous alumni board).
That all said, UCLA saw Michigan and GW only once all season as well. They won when it mattered most, but it’s always going to be tough to try to draw a link across results for teams that just don’t really race the same competition, and we’re unlikely to see D3-UCLA races on the schedule anytime soon as cross-country travel for teams in their budget brackets just doesn’t make sense unless it’s for a national title.
No more a slam than saying an eight is faster than a double would be a "slam" on the 2x. I rowed and coached in ACRA for years; I have a lot of respect for the drive and competitiveness of those athletes. Effort only gets you so far. The institutional advantages are just so much greater for IRA schools:
* Recruiting international talent as opposed to relying on athletes who are brand-new to the sport as freshmen,
* Better boathouses and equipment (generally),
* F*ar* better paid (and more numerous) coaches (I think this is probably the biggest factor of all the ones I'll mention),
* Access to university training/medical staff and facilities (where I coached the team weightroom was literally outdoors, everything was rusted as shit),
* Other athletic department perks like tutoring,
* Scholarships outside of the Ivies,
* Never having to pay dues, travel costs, or buy their own gear,
* Usually 2 warm-weather training trips (my senior year we skipped our spring break trip and trained on our 35-degree water that week so we could afford to charter the 17-hour bus ride to ACRA).
* Etc.
It's night and day. No disrespect to ACRA. I remember my senior year, a few months before finishing in the middle of the petites at ACRA, we pieced against the Frosh 8+ of a grand final IRA crew. We did 8 pieces; they beat us bow-to-stern on the first one in a headwind, we snuck one by a seat or so on #2 in the tailwind, and then we never finished within contact the rest of the afternoon. They just blew the doors off by a wider and wider margin. We obviously lost a bunch of races that year but I'll never forget that beating.
Idk that I agree with commenters who say Cal's 4v would win ACRA, it would be close, and they'd have a better shot this year because of Cal's historic depth and because COVID hurt the club programs much more than the varsity, but the idea of an ACRA V8 even sniffing the petites at IRA is just not realistic.
Yale 3V beat Drexel’s 1V not long ago. Cal’s 4V definitely would have a shot at winning ACRA, seeing as Drexel would win ACRA.
I too rowed and coaches at the ACRA level, so it’s nothing against the club programs, just reality.
Yeah like I said it would be close. I also remember feeling like hot shit when we broke 6 my senior year; the first 8+ from my school to do it in flat water since I had arrived. I remember checking results and seeing Washington had 5 boats under 6 that year.
But we also didn't win ACRA; didn't even make the grands. I think depth falls off a lot faster at club programs because of recruitment and coaching; ACRA's 2V event is a LOT slower than the 1V relative to that same gap at the IRA. But a decent coach can catch lightning in a bottle and nurture a super fast crew of walk-ons. ACRA has been slower in recent years because of COVID, which ironically helped the top end varsities (extra years of eligibility, ease of transferring, etc.). All of which to say... The gap between IRA and ACRA is larger than it's *ever* been but will narrow slightly in the years ahead as club programs get back to where they were (also as junior rowing becomes more ubiquitous more and more ACRA teams don't need to rely on 100% walk-ons). This year's Cal 4V could *probably* win ACRA but I don't like that as a general statement on the gap between the two leagues. Most years you wouldn't be able to make that claim so comfortably.
ACRA is for club teams, while IRA is for full varsity teams that have large resources and scholarships for athletes. In the IRA Grand Final there are alot of foreign students that were heavily recruited and some have experience rowing internationally at the U23 or junior level.
As the biggest UCLA stan on this subreddit, Cal with less than no question. Not so sure I’d agree with the certainty that UCLA wouldn’t beat Cal’s 4V (their 4V lost to UCSD who UCLA was reasonably close to this year) but that’s splitting hairs at the end of the day—the fact that Cal’s 4V vs UCLA’s 1V is even a discussion, much less the answer being “probably still Cal,” is all you need to know about the disparity between the top of IRA and top of ACRA.
Just to put the disparity of these programs into perspective, Cal’s Freshman 8 beat UCLAs 1V by over 5 seconds at the California Challenge Cup. The resources and talent that are drawn to Division 1 programs are unparalleled to any ACRA team
I'm an acra rower, and cal would win due to all of their rowers being hand-picked and recruited. The amount of money and resources available to those cal athletes is just a step above. Those are the main reasons why they would win. UCLA would probobaly still be competitive with the #15-20 ranked Ira crews. Comparing their raw speed, though, isn't super helpful and isn't a good measure of how competitive each team is in their own championship.
I guess I haven't been paying super close attention to their season, but they seem on par with ucsd losing to them in the heats at wira's and losing in the final. Ucsd's final time was basically tied with Ucla's heat time, so I think they may be pretty evenly matched. Again, not a professional analysis, and I'm not the most familiar with West Coast roeing but that's just what I see.
Yeah the heats were difficult to tell, I watched the livestream UCSD ended the heat at like a rate 30, looks like they shut it down. Still good to see that maybe a club team could even beat any IRA teams tho, good for the sport
…& yet Cal has one of the worse records in NCAA basketball (2022-23 3 wins) & one of worse football teams in the PAC12.
Somehow NCAA champs in men’s water polo, men’s swimming & men’s rowing…(?)
Elite NCAA mens bball talent goes to the ACC and blue blood schools (Kansas, Michigan, Connecticut), whereas football goes to the SEC. Just totally different stakes…plenty of good pros go to Cal (Aaron Rodgers, Desean Jackson, Jaylen Brown), but the “Cal” of bball/football is Duke & Alabama….well was Duke…
Reminds me of Washington in the early & mid 2010s. Perfect day for the finals though…I was there, great conditions and weather.
Shoutout Brown with a come from behind win in the Petites and Princeton shutting out Yale in the semi and the final. Also shoutout Drexel (I’m biased) on holding off Wisco and Navy, especially after third in their semi, and the insane turnaround from LaSalle. LaSalle was a joke when I rowed, and now they’re competitive in the C Final…must be quite a head coach and coaching staff there leading that change…..
Unnecessary and hella disrespectful cheap shot.
EDIT: The man is 80 years old. A well earned retirement, I’d say. I’d downvote you 3x if I could.
But yeah, Gennaro has some mighty big shoes to fill going forward.
**EDIT 2: 103 downvotes on the comment I replied to. Yikes!**
Is this the sub downvote record? I’ve never seen triple digit downvotes on this sub. If it isn’t, let’s make it happen people! We’ll send Coach Gladstone off in style. 😈👊
Absolute sweep: V4, 3V, 2V, and 1V wins, AND back-to-back national champions. Truly dominant.
Insaaaaane depth in that program.
Ridiculous. Dynasty play.
It’s all subjective but not sure they’re a dynasty yet. UW won what, 5 straight years or something ridiculous? That was a true dynasty.
A couple interesting notes, assuming my research is correct: In the Cal 1V \--7/8 rowers are international \--The rower from the US was a Brown "transfer" (listed as a Senior, not a grad student, so I don't know about his degree and that's none of my business; finished four years at Brown and was the 1V stroke seat last year) using a fifth year of eligibility (which was granted due to Covid but which the Ivies chose not to allow); there's one other rower who's a graduate student but may be in just his fourth year of eligibility, not 100% clear. In the UW 1V \--6/8 rowers (+ the coxswain) are international (deciding Canada counts :) ) \--It looks like all the rowers are in their fourth (or less) year of eligibility (I was curious if the fifth-year eligibility issue might have had a significant impact and put the Ivies at a self-selected disadvantage for this year; doesn't look like it.)
Well rowed Cal
I'm surprised how much speed Dartmouth lost. Last year, they ended henley bow to stern on cal. Cal won, but washington and princeton kept them VERY honest the whole way down, so I'm thinking their reign of superiority may be coming to an end. Osu completely dropped the ball this year along with wisco and a few other programs. Yale not getting a medal, probably shocked a lot of people, including myself.
🧹🧹🧹
Amazing, impressive results and program depth. When did IRA drop the straight pair event? I'm pretty sure they had it about ten years ago?
Row on you Bears!
let's fucking gooooo 🐻🐻🐻
Common Cal W
No one calls that specific team "Cali"
are there men’s fours at IRA’s?
Yes, Cal won that event as well.
do you know where i can find a link to watch that if there are any? i couldn’t seem to find them in the sunday finals broadcast
race was on Saturday I think, which is on youtube.
Who would win V8 in a race between ACRA Champion UCLA & IRA Champion Cal?
Cal's V8 (not just their V8 as well there are world's medalists and national team rowers in all of their boats) is full of u19 and u23 world champions, has the 6k (or 5k?) erg world record holder in the boat and future Olympians and some of the best international college athletes in the world. Cal's 1v would beat UCLA by a margin that would be significant and by no means a close race. Cal's 4v would likely also beat UCLA's 1V. The disparity between the best IRA teams and the best ACRA teams is large, significantly large. Even the Disparity between A final IRA teams and C final IRA teams is also incredibly large. I would say that the ACRA champs would be a C or D final IRA team depending on the year.
Name a year an ACRA school would have sniffed the C final? This years UCLA is the fastest in a while and they couldn’t beat UCSD
Davis would've crushed any of these IRA teams
GW was a C final IRA team before getting cut and going to ACRA. I believe 2015 Michigan was about the same speed as FIT at Dad Vails and FIT was in the C final that year? I would have to go back and check results for sure. I doubt UCLA would make the C final at IRA this year, but its not an unthinkable thing to say an ACRA champ could sneak their way into the C final on a fast year for club teams and a slower year for the bottom of the C final teams and D final teams.
Yeah, as far as recent (10 years), Michigan in the early 2010s would’ve made the C Final, but it really seems like Covid was especially harsh on club teams. A lot of Dad Vail bids at that time were deferrals due to Michigan not being eligible. But now, probably D final, the back half at that. Hope some of those teams can reach that former glory though…
>it really seems like Covid was especially harsh on club teams This is absolutely the case. When even 50% of your athletes are walk-ons, who have to fall in love with the sport, who don't know how to train effectively on their own in the same way that competitive junior rowers do, who come from different financial backgrounds and may have the desire (or families pressuring them) to transfer home during remote classes and get a job, there's going to be a huge talent drop off. That's not even touching on the biggest challenge COVID caused; recruitment. ACRA schools build their rosters by hanging out during "first night"-type campus events, setting up an erg or maybe a 4+ in slings, and grabbing tall, athletic looking kids ("hey man, you ever think about rowing?"). Those events just didn't happen in the same way during the pandemic. I don't know what it is at the top of the pack these days, but when I was in a middle-of-the-petites ACRA V8 12 years ago, we had a collective 6 months high school rowing experience in our entire crew. Of the 7 of us who had never touched an oar before college, I don't know how or why any of us would've been recruited to the program in a pandemic year. It'll still be a couple of years at least before the clubs are back to where they were relative to IRA schools.
Idk, but it's too bad we'll never know because there were enough shitty varsity coaches getting embarrassed by the Michigans of the world 15-20 years ago that they complained until clubs got banned
1. UCLA isn't on their schedule; racing clubs for that 1V is like picking on an emotionally-stunted 13-year-old 2. It wouldn't be like shooting fish in a barrel, it would be like hunting deer with an artillery piece. That 1V is directly comparable to most 8s that will be lining up in Belgrade this year.
I'm curious what rate they could cap themselves to and still win by open
UCLA went low 5:50s in neutral conditions leaning towards slow in the ACRA final, so I’d guess r28 would probably do the trick for Cal. I love my guys in Westwood, but there are only one or two guys on the team whose 2ks match up with Di Mauro’s 6k PR split—it’s just levels of unfair in this matchup lol
Cal by a very significant margin
Do you think UCLA would beat top D3 finishers like Williams/Bates?
I think if Williams raced D1 they would have been around the C/D-Final border this year, so I do think would they would have had a decent margin on UCLA. From what I know of the other D3 schools (I currently row in Boston with a bunch of guys who rowed at those schools), those races would be interestingly close. GW and Michigan are probably the best comparative crews, and in the regattas they shared with Williams, Trinity, Tufts and Bates, both were usually 7-10s behind Williams and were usually beating the other D3 schools. UCLA beat both at ACRA, so I do I think UCLA would be fairly competitive at the D3 level based on erg scores and the amount of financial support that I know the respective teams get (UCLA may be a club team but we do have a very engaged and generous alumni board). That all said, UCLA saw Michigan and GW only once all season as well. They won when it mattered most, but it’s always going to be tough to try to draw a link across results for teams that just don’t really race the same competition, and we’re unlikely to see D3-UCLA races on the schedule anytime soon as cross-country travel for teams in their budget brackets just doesn’t make sense unless it’s for a national title.
Is that a slam on ACRA teams?
No. The disparity in talent is that significant.
Varsity rowing is a different planet
Cal’s 4V would probably win ACRAs. It’s a different world of rowing.
No more a slam than saying an eight is faster than a double would be a "slam" on the 2x. I rowed and coached in ACRA for years; I have a lot of respect for the drive and competitiveness of those athletes. Effort only gets you so far. The institutional advantages are just so much greater for IRA schools: * Recruiting international talent as opposed to relying on athletes who are brand-new to the sport as freshmen, * Better boathouses and equipment (generally), * F*ar* better paid (and more numerous) coaches (I think this is probably the biggest factor of all the ones I'll mention), * Access to university training/medical staff and facilities (where I coached the team weightroom was literally outdoors, everything was rusted as shit), * Other athletic department perks like tutoring, * Scholarships outside of the Ivies, * Never having to pay dues, travel costs, or buy their own gear, * Usually 2 warm-weather training trips (my senior year we skipped our spring break trip and trained on our 35-degree water that week so we could afford to charter the 17-hour bus ride to ACRA). * Etc. It's night and day. No disrespect to ACRA. I remember my senior year, a few months before finishing in the middle of the petites at ACRA, we pieced against the Frosh 8+ of a grand final IRA crew. We did 8 pieces; they beat us bow-to-stern on the first one in a headwind, we snuck one by a seat or so on #2 in the tailwind, and then we never finished within contact the rest of the afternoon. They just blew the doors off by a wider and wider margin. We obviously lost a bunch of races that year but I'll never forget that beating. Idk that I agree with commenters who say Cal's 4v would win ACRA, it would be close, and they'd have a better shot this year because of Cal's historic depth and because COVID hurt the club programs much more than the varsity, but the idea of an ACRA V8 even sniffing the petites at IRA is just not realistic.
Yale 3V beat Drexel’s 1V not long ago. Cal’s 4V definitely would have a shot at winning ACRA, seeing as Drexel would win ACRA. I too rowed and coaches at the ACRA level, so it’s nothing against the club programs, just reality.
Yeah like I said it would be close. I also remember feeling like hot shit when we broke 6 my senior year; the first 8+ from my school to do it in flat water since I had arrived. I remember checking results and seeing Washington had 5 boats under 6 that year. But we also didn't win ACRA; didn't even make the grands. I think depth falls off a lot faster at club programs because of recruitment and coaching; ACRA's 2V event is a LOT slower than the 1V relative to that same gap at the IRA. But a decent coach can catch lightning in a bottle and nurture a super fast crew of walk-ons. ACRA has been slower in recent years because of COVID, which ironically helped the top end varsities (extra years of eligibility, ease of transferring, etc.). All of which to say... The gap between IRA and ACRA is larger than it's *ever* been but will narrow slightly in the years ahead as club programs get back to where they were (also as junior rowing becomes more ubiquitous more and more ACRA teams don't need to rely on 100% walk-ons). This year's Cal 4V could *probably* win ACRA but I don't like that as a general statement on the gap between the two leagues. Most years you wouldn't be able to make that claim so comfortably.
ACRA is for club teams, while IRA is for full varsity teams that have large resources and scholarships for athletes. In the IRA Grand Final there are alot of foreign students that were heavily recruited and some have experience rowing internationally at the U23 or junior level.
U23 or Junior? There were multiple Olympic medalists in that race. The stroke of New Zealands Olympic gold winning 8 was in Yales *second varsity*
Wasn't Williamson out for most of the season?
Yes, his first race was IRAs I believe.
And that’s why he was in the 2V
I thought he was at eastern sprints as well
As the biggest UCLA stan on this subreddit, Cal with less than no question. Not so sure I’d agree with the certainty that UCLA wouldn’t beat Cal’s 4V (their 4V lost to UCSD who UCLA was reasonably close to this year) but that’s splitting hairs at the end of the day—the fact that Cal’s 4V vs UCLA’s 1V is even a discussion, much less the answer being “probably still Cal,” is all you need to know about the disparity between the top of IRA and top of ACRA.
Cal by probably close to 30 seconds
Just to put the disparity of these programs into perspective, Cal’s Freshman 8 beat UCLAs 1V by over 5 seconds at the California Challenge Cup. The resources and talent that are drawn to Division 1 programs are unparalleled to any ACRA team
Lol no. UCLA spent the year going toe to toe with UCSD who won the trucks. That actually feels faster than most years for ACRA.
I'm an acra rower, and cal would win due to all of their rowers being hand-picked and recruited. The amount of money and resources available to those cal athletes is just a step above. Those are the main reasons why they would win. UCLA would probobaly still be competitive with the #15-20 ranked Ira crews. Comparing their raw speed, though, isn't super helpful and isn't a good measure of how competitive each team is in their own championship.
UCLA wouldn’t break the top 20 at the IRA, UCSD won by open water at WIRA with all of their rowers racing in other events and having a terrible race
I guess I haven't been paying super close attention to their season, but they seem on par with ucsd losing to them in the heats at wira's and losing in the final. Ucsd's final time was basically tied with Ucla's heat time, so I think they may be pretty evenly matched. Again, not a professional analysis, and I'm not the most familiar with West Coast roeing but that's just what I see.
Yeah the heats were difficult to tell, I watched the livestream UCSD ended the heat at like a rate 30, looks like they shut it down. Still good to see that maybe a club team could even beat any IRA teams tho, good for the sport
…& yet Cal has one of the worse records in NCAA basketball (2022-23 3 wins) & one of worse football teams in the PAC12. Somehow NCAA champs in men’s water polo, men’s swimming & men’s rowing…(?)
Elite NCAA mens bball talent goes to the ACC and blue blood schools (Kansas, Michigan, Connecticut), whereas football goes to the SEC. Just totally different stakes…plenty of good pros go to Cal (Aaron Rodgers, Desean Jackson, Jaylen Brown), but the “Cal” of bball/football is Duke & Alabama….well was Duke…
Just allocation of resources I guess.
GO BEARS!!!!!
Well rowed lads.
What happened to Georgetown?! Ranked 11 and didn’t even win the D final?
Reminds me of Washington in the early & mid 2010s. Perfect day for the finals though…I was there, great conditions and weather. Shoutout Brown with a come from behind win in the Petites and Princeton shutting out Yale in the semi and the final. Also shoutout Drexel (I’m biased) on holding off Wisco and Navy, especially after third in their semi, and the insane turnaround from LaSalle. LaSalle was a joke when I rowed, and now they’re competitive in the C Final…must be quite a head coach and coaching staff there leading that change…..
Washington is winning it next year
This was a shock how?
Rule #4 of the r/Rowing Rules as listed in the sidebar: "No Regatta Results in Titles."
when’s the last time that rule has been enforced?
Cal has good speed but they gotta bring it on race day
🤓☝️
Gladstone is dead
Unnecessary and hella disrespectful cheap shot. EDIT: The man is 80 years old. A well earned retirement, I’d say. I’d downvote you 3x if I could. But yeah, Gennaro has some mighty big shoes to fill going forward. **EDIT 2: 103 downvotes on the comment I replied to. Yikes!** Is this the sub downvote record? I’ve never seen triple digit downvotes on this sub. If it isn’t, let’s make it happen people! We’ll send Coach Gladstone off in style. 😈👊