Feature Story: Washington Sweeps IRA

The University of Washington swept the heavyweight events at the 121st IRA National Championship Regatta, winning the first, second, and third varsity eights on Sunday, June 2, after winning the varsity four on Saturday on Mercer Lake, in West Windsor, N.J.

“It’s a good day,” said Washington head coach Michael Callahan. “Sometimes you can tell when boats have a certain energy and confidence, and I felt like if we had a good piece today, we could do it.”

Cal head coach Scott Frandsen, whose Golden Bears enjoyed an historic sweep of heavyweight events at last year’s IRA, came into this year’s regatta with an improving crew and optimism, despite having dropped the regular-season dual meet and Pac-12 championship to bitter rival Washington.

“We have three crews that have built really well over the last couple months, last couple weeks, and have a real chance here,” said Frandsen before Sunday’s grand final.

Princeton University, undefeated in the regular season, entered the Eastern Sprints two weeks before the IRA as the No. 1-ranked crew in the nation before being upset by a tenth of second by Brown. Little did they know that the Eastern Sprints heat would be the last time they would be first across the line. At the IRA, the Tigers finished behind Harvard University by 2.5 seconds in their Friday heat, before finishing second to Washington by less than half a second in the faster semifinal.

This year’s IRAs featured a new heats-semis-finals progression that dispensed with the regatta’s traditional repechage round for crews that didn’t win their heat to earn places in the semifinals, usually the best races of the year.

“There might be coaches who disagree, but it seemed like the crews that should have been in the A/B semifinals were in the A/B semifinals,” said Dartmouth College heavyweight head coach Wyatt Allen. “I feel like the benefit of no reps is everyone had a fair shot at making the grand final. That’s all you can ask for.”

The new format worked, in terms of the best 12 crews racing in the two A/B semifinals, but there was definitely a faster and slower semi, with the former relegating Sprints-champion Brown to the petite final—which Bruno won by a length with a time faster than all but the medalists in the grand final.

Syracuse University kept alive a four-year streak of making the national championship grand final by finishing third in its A/B semifinal.

“They started talking at the beginning of the year about not being the guys who let the streak end,” said Syracuse head coach Dave Reischman. “At the start of the year, it wasn’t grand-final speed—just day by day, getting a little bit better, just ‘OK, what’s the next step, what do we need to do?’ One of the best feelings as a coach is when you work on something in practice and you see your guys actually execute it out on the racecourse.”

Princeton coaches Greg Hughes and Matt Smith, who in head coach Hughes’ telling function more like two head coaches than a head and an assistant coach, embrace new technology and spent much of Sunday looking at their smartphone screens. They could have been watching the Overnght livestream, which worked better on phones than the jumbo screen—that froze midway through the national championship grand final.

What that screen didn’t show was Washington leading a tight race with authority and efficacy, outlasting a fast and challenging Harvard varsity, the only crew to beat the Huskies to the line during the spring, a late-sprint victory at the Sarasota IRA Invitational in March.

“When it’s going well, it’s contagious,” said Callahan. “The boathouse has been so great that way. It’s been really good internal competition that has raised each other up.”

The second varsity heavyweight event featured Washington, day after day after day, as the Huskies won their heat, semi, and grand final each by more than two seconds. Princeton finished solidly in second for silver, and a Dartmouth JV that had shown great sprinting chops at Sprints and again at the IRA, sprinted across the line third, just ahead of Cal.

“You don’t ever count on a sprint like that,” said Allen, “but we kind of knew they had it in their back pocket.”

Washington’s third varsity proved to be the Huskies’ most dominant eight, racing into the 5:30s in winning the grand final after progressing through the Friday heats and Saturday semis undefeated. In rowing, times are not comparable because of varying conditions, but any varsity, let alone a third varsity, covering 2,000 meters in that time is fast.

“I’ve been really fortunate to have an amazing staff this year,” said Washington head coach Michael Callahan, “Nate Goodman did an amazing job with the group.”

Fours—men’s varsity and lightweight, and women’s lightweight—drew bigger fields than the corresponding varsity eights due to the regatta’s qualifying protocols. The men’s fours event utilized time trials to set semifinal fields, another relatively novel feature of the 121-year-old regatta.

The varsity fours, in which Washington won the time trial, its semi, and the grand final to start the Huskies’ heavyweight sweep on Saturday, drew 35 entries, the most of any IRA event. Dartmouth finished second for the Big Green’s first of two heavyweight men’s medals at the regatta. Florida Institute of Technology made program history by winning the bronze, its first-ever IRA medal. In June 2022, the university president announced its intention to cut the program, but six oarsmen filed a Title IX lawsuit and the program was reinstated in 2023. With no seniors in the Florida Tech crew, a second medal could come as soon as next year.

Princeton repeated as women’s lightweight national champions, winning the varsity eight and adding the points trophy with a silver in the double and a bronze in the four.

“What we’re most proud of is winning the team-points trophy again,” said coach Paul Rassam. “That’s not easy for our team. We don’t get a lot of recruits. They’re ferocious racers, whether they’re in first, second, third, fourth. There’s only so much of that you can teach.”

Stanford University won the women’s lightweight four. Boston University—only third in a semifinal where the top three finished within three-tenths of second—crossed the line second.

Boston University won the women’s lightweight double, the only sculling event and the only other Olympic event besides the men’s eight.

Harvard’s men’s varsity lightweights led start to finish to add the national championship to their Eastern Sprints title.

“IRAs is different just because IRAs is so much more drawn out,” said coxswain Anya Cheng. “There’s a lot of time to sit and wait and think. Our mentality going into it was to eliminate all the noise and just row the race that we know we could row. We knew that when we hit our top speed, we were going to win. So we just focused on that.”

In the men’s lightweight second varsity eight grand final, the top six crews went under six minutes over Mercer Lake’s 2,000-meter course, with Harvard’s second varsity repeating its first boat’s gold-medal success. Penn finished second, and Cornell was third, less than three-tenths of a second ahead of Navy in fourth.

Georgetown University, which did not race a lightweight eight, won the lightweight four event ahead of Columbia in second and Penn in third.

Wesleyan University held off Williams College by two-tenths of second to win its first Division III national championship. Both crews won their respective heats to set up a showdown in the final. Williams closed the gap with Wesleyan as they raced to the line, but the Cardinals held on—barely—for the win, the first ever in rowing for the Connecticut school, and only its third in any sport. After failing to qualify for the inaugural IRA Division III national-championship regatta in 2022, Wesleyan finished second in 2023 and completed a perfect season in 2024 by winning seven races.

Phil Carney, the longest-serving coach in any sport at Wesleyan and a steady presence in the boathouse for 37 years, deserves credit for capturing the Cardinals’ first Division III national championship.

Commissioner Gary Caldwell retired at the end of the regatta, his 31st in the role.

“It’s been an honor and privilege to serve the student-athletes for all these years,” said Caldwell.

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