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Women's Rowing at NCAAs - ColoradoTree - 05-26-2017

Caveat up front: I know next to nothing about rowing.  But I do like it when Stanford challenges for national titles.  And it seems like our #8-ranked women's rowing team is doing just that at NCAAs.

In the opening heats this morning, the 1st Varsity Eight had the fastest time of any boat, and qualified directly for tomorrow's A/B semifinals.  The Varsity Four also advanced to the A/B semifinals after finishing second in its heat.  The 2nd Varsity Eight just barely missed directly qualifying for the A/B semifinals after finishing third in its heat by a half second, but will compete in a repechage this afternoon to see if they can advance directly.  As I understand it, the national title scoring system is based on the combined performance of those three boats: the 1st and 2nd Varsity Eights plus the Varsity Four.  Exactly how those performances are translated into points is beyond my ken, and we still need to get those boats into their respective A finals (not to mention getting the 2nd Eight into the A/B semifinal), but as of right now, it seems like they're in the mix.  (Of course, the higher-ranked teams may have had lesser competition in their heats and thus didn't have to work as hard to advance.  Caution seems warranted here, much like in swimming where a top swimmer aims to qualify with a good lane while exerting as little energy as possible, so they can ease up in the prelims before turning it on in the semis and finals.  That's probably what's going on here, frankly.) 

In other news (that I learned today): Apparently Cal won the national title last year, but Washington is #1 this year and a dominant player in women's rowing.  Michigan, Texas, UVA, and Ohio State are also good, it seems, as are some Ivies. 

Any seasoned rowing experts out there that have thoughts on whether Stanford could pull some upsets and steal a national title?  Seems like we've got a shot for some good Directors' Cup points at least. 

Re: Women's Rowing at NCAAs - StanfordMatt - 05-26-2017

The fact you used the word "repechage" means that you know a little more than "next to nothing about rowing."  :P

Re: Women's Rowing at NCAAs - bl82 - 05-26-2017

And FWIW, UW hired our coach, Yasmin Farooq, away from us last summer.  That was a big loss, but Burnes appears to have the team peaking at the right time.

Re: Women's Rowing at NCAAs - ColoradoTree - 05-26-2017

Ha!  I guess I knew that from the Olympics (I love the living heck out of the Olympics).  What I meant was, I have no idea about the ins and outs of rowing, how and why certain teams do well, how the championships are scored exactly, and how a team is good other than, well, physical strength.  I can pick apart certain sports that I know better, but my rowing analysis would be limited to, "huh, that team went really fast; they must be good." 

I'm curious whether this sport is more like college golf (where the #8 team could absolutely beat the #1 team in match play on a good day) or college tennis (where #8 beating #1 is far less likely, unless we've got a Stanford-level underseeding situation going on). 

Re: Women's Rowing at NCAAs - BigEasyCard - 05-26-2017

(05-26-2017, 12:58 PM)ColoradoTree link Wrote:Caveat up front: I know next to nothing about rowing.  But I do like it when Stanford challenges for national titles.  And it seems like our #8-ranked women's rowing team is doing just that at NCAAs....

  Exactly how those performances are translated into points is beyond my ken, and we still need to get those boats into their respective A finals (not to mention getting the 2nd Eight into the A/B semifinal), but as of right now, it seems like they're in the mix. 

....

Any seasoned rowing experts out there that have thoughts on whether Stanford could pull some upsets and steal a national title?  Seems like we've got a shot for some good Directors' Cup points at least.

In fullmetal's absence, I'll jump in here.  I rowed stroke at the DIII level decades ago, but don't consider myself an expert.

Points are awarded to 22 places with values for first place as follows:

I Eights 66
II Eights 44
Fours 22

Values per place drop by 3, 2 and 1 respectively for the above categories.  The details are on page 16 of the NCAA participant manual here:

http://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/2017DIROW_PreChampionships_Manual_20170220.pdf

While upsets happen and crews sometimes perform significantly better than their seeding, I'd say that the expected results are more like tennis than golf.  There are some weather factors based on race time, but races of a given class are generally scheduled close together.  Also, sometimes there are accidents or equipment failures that affect the outcome.

In any event, the Stanford Women are a top tier program and they should earn some Cup points again this year.

Geaux Cardinal!



Re: Women's Rowing at NCAAs - BigEasyCard - 05-27-2017

With Day 2 racing complete, the Cardinal are set for the following finals tomorrow (All times Eastern):

10:00 am Fours Petite Final, Lane 3
10:24 am II Eights Petite Final, Lane 5
11:00 am I Eights Grand Final, Lane 3

In the Grand Final, the Cardinal line up between Cal and Washington.  This should be a very exciting race which you can watch here:

http://www.ncaa.com/sports/rowing/d1

Since Washington and Cal qualified all three boats for the Grand Finals, they have probably mathematically eliminated Stanford from winning the Championship.  However, a Cardinal victory in the I Eights Grand Final would be sweet indeed.

Geaux Cardinal!

Re: Women's Rowing at NCAAs - BigEasyCard - 05-27-2017

Nice write-up about how each crew got to their respective final:

http://www.gostanford.com/news/2017/5/27/womens-rowing-varsity-eight-reaches-grand-final.aspx

Geaux Cardinal!

Re: Women's Rowing at NCAAs - BigEasyCard - 05-28-2017

Cardinal Women finish in 2nd in I Eights, and 9th in both II Eights and Fours.

Washington swept all three events and wins the Championship.

Overall points not yet posted but Cal finished second overall.

Geaux Cardinal!

Re: Women's Rowing at NCAAs - BigEasyCard - 05-28-2017

Cardinal finish 6th with 105 points.

Final team standings here: http://www.regattatiming.com/results/420/heatsheets/2017-ncaa-final-team-standings.pdf

The team finished better than their #8 ranking.  The I Eight really pushed Washington in the Grand Final.  Way to go!

Geaux Cardinal!

Re: Women's Rowing at NCAAs - TheFarm07 - 05-28-2017

With UW's win, the Pac-12 also clinches its 500th national title, far more as a conference than second-place Big Ten with 306 crowns.

http://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/19483825/washington-huskies-win-ncaa-women-rowing-title-pac-12-first-500-titles

Re: Women's Rowing at NCAAs - fullmetal - 05-29-2017

Y'all got it pretty much right (nice job ColoradoTree and BigEasyCard).

Rowing is not really a sport where significant speed upsets happen.  Most of the race is won or lost in your base aerobic speed, much like cycling, one-mile run, or cross-country skiing.  But like the mile run, races are short enough that anaerobic strength (sprinting capacity) can affect results.  There is room, however, for small differences in speed to vary from race to race (ballpark that variability at six seconds), and my opinion is that this is comprised of the psychological/mental resilience and technical aspect of the rowing stroke.  The smaller the boat, the greater the variability as well.  Look at Stanford's V4 heat, where they beat Wisconsin by 3.6 seconds.  Fast forward to the B Final, and Wisconsin wins the B Final with a 4.6 second margin over Stanford.  Some teams have physiologies better suited for multiple races over consecutive days.  Sometimes crews need another race to find their rhythm.

I was surprised to see Stanford's 1V have such a great regatta after the duals and conference championship races, but there are various reasons as to how that could have been -- peaking at the right time, maybe a lineup change that produced better rhythm, better focus with the pre-regatta trip out east ahead of the racing (no school, social life, etc. distractions).  Back in the day when the first varsity eights race was the only thing that mattered, Stanford would have been second, but the team points format really puts a premium on depth (and consequently, recruiting--with which Stanford has the typical issues).

Though the 2V and V4 didn't make their respective A Finals, that doesn't take away from their performance.  The season's results indicated that these boats would have a hard time competing with top-end speed, and they pretty much held serve, which Stanford needed.  Making it into the B Final is no longer a cakewalk these days--most advancements out of repechages were by margins of less than two seconds this weekend.  The lower boats did what they had to do, and I hope they train hard over the summer to improve on a decent finish this season (everyone else will be training...!).

UW was a wire-to-wire season favorite, I think, to win the NCAA (team) title.  With the exception of their dual race with kal, the Huskies just kept winning, and even then voters still ranked UW as the #1 team the week after those losses.  That's a testament to the voters' faith in Yaz Farooq's coaching abilities, either to get the team back on track or to peak at the right time. 

It is very interesting that this was Yaz's first year as the UW coach after leaving Stanford.  Last season, the celebrated UW coach Bob Ernst was unceremoniously fired in November after a group of rowers filed Title IX accusations against him for what was essentially body/weight discrimination/shaming.  The athletic director who handled that left UW the following month and was hired back in his home SEC territory at A&M.  UW elevated an assistant into the interim head coach position, and the Huskies finished fifth overall last season, one point behind Stanford.  With Yaz at the helm, the Huskies immediately became favorites and eventually delivered a championship.  There are implications about rowing talent, coaching abilities/methods, and recruiting that can be drawn here, but it's nothing new. 

Of note, I think it bears mentioning that the ACC had a big down year, as Virginia/Syracuse were slower than expected.  Michigan seems to have supplanted Ohio St. as the Big 10 power, but there was a drop-off after Michigan to Ohio St. (though the Buckeye lower boats carried the day for their team points).  Notably, I thought Indiana and Iowa were overrated.  Yale, Brown, and Princeton seemed to hold steady--maybe we're seeing a reversal in the Ivy League performance decline now.  I thought WSU should have been faster, and it's a shame that U$C didn't make the selection cut.  I do think the Pac-12 is probably the fastest conference from top to bottom.

Big congrats to the Stanford women's crew and first-year head coach Derek Byrnes (and his staff) for a great finish to a season spent in the most competitive rowing conference!

(I was in Gainesville, GA for the weekend at another rowing event where I didn't have time to check The Cardboard...I'll also be waking up around 4-5am for the next couple of days as that imposed circadian rhythm wears off!)