Cardinals Ready for 2009 BIG EAST Rowing Championship
April 23, 2009 | Rowing
April 23, 2009
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The University of Louisville rowing team enters Saturday's 2009 BIG EAST Championship as the top seed in the Varsity Eight event for the first time in the program's history.
This year's BIG EAST Rowing Championships are set for Saturday morning at Cooper River Park in Pennsauken, N.J. Preliminary racing on the Cooper River near Camden, N.J., will begin at 7 a.m. ET, with championship races set to start at 9:40 a.m. Team awards will be announced at 11:25 a.m.
Overall, head coach Laura Fogt's Cardinals will have crews competing in all five scored racing events, led by the 19th-ranked varsity eight crew, which earned the No. 1 seed in the BIG EAST event ahead of No. 2 Notre Dame and No. 3 Syracuse. Louisville will also have crews racing in the Second Varsity Eight event (No. 2 seed), Varsity Four event (No. 2 seed), Second Varsity Four event (No. 3 seed) and Novice Eight event (No. 8 seed).
The Cardinals open the race day in the first of two Varsity Eight heat races at 7 a.m., and will continue at 7:30 a.m., in heat race No. 2 in the Second Varsity Eight event. Louisville will then compete in the first of two heat races in the Novice Eight event at 7:40 a.m., while U of L's preliminary racing will be completed at 8:10 a.m., with the second and final Varsity Four heat race.
Louisville enters the weekend following three wins at last week's Southern Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championships in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Leading the way at the SIRA Championships was the Cards' varsity eight crew, ranked 17th at the time, which covered the 2,000-meter course in a time of 6 minutes, 47.80 seconds to finish seven seconds clear of second place Grand Valley State at 6:54.80.
"Despite the good results last weekend, we anticipated that we would not move up in the polls because there were no ranked schools at the SIRA Championships," said Fogt. "We used the championship event to prepare for our BIG EAST Championship this weekend and I think we're ready to go."
Last year, the Cardinals earned their third straight runner-up team finish and their third consecutive second-place finish in the Varsity Eight Grand Final at the BIG EAST Championship.
