Crew Has the Most Wins at Rutgers Fall Classic

On 7 Nov., the Army West Point Crew team travelled to New Brunswick, NJ, to compete in the last race of the season, the annual Rutgers Fall Classic. This was the first time that the team was invited to participate in the 2.5 mile race on the Raritan River, giving each Crew an opportunity to race against top boats from Rutgers, Bucknell, and Navy. In a departure from traditional fall head races, each team boated their top two crews as “even” boats, with the winning school deter-mined by the combined time of each team’s top two crews. Army crew captured the most wins of any school, prevailing in two of the four events, and winning covet-ed Rutgers Fall Classic Mugs with the fastest combined times in both the Men’s Varsity 4+, and the Women’s Freshman 8+ races. The winning Women’s Freshman boats consisted of CDTs Mary Bahr, Sara Boelter, Kate Campbell, Maggie Gleason, Catherine Hall, Lauren Hudak, Raquel Huggins, Megan Jarrell, Claire Jones, Amanda Kuruc, Samantha Leahy, Hannah Makuch, Natalie Nepa, Lauren Pile, Ashley Rivera, and Hannah Wentland, with coxswains CDT Xiao Pfohman and CDT Sydney Volenec. The cadets manning the first place finish Varsity 4+ boats included CDTS Jon Gilbertson, Winton Park, Dru Milke, Brad Wagner, Charlie Toch, Chris Wagner, Ethan Grogan, and Steven Martin, with CDT Jordan Duran and CDT Michael Huang in the coxswains seat. The Army Crew came in 2nd in the Women’s Varsity 4+ behind a much larger NCAA team from Rutgers. The Men’s Freshman 8+ finished behind Bucknell and the elite Corp-Squad Level DIV I heavyweight and lightweight teams from Navy, while besting their peers from Rutgers. In total, Army Crew entered eleven boats in the four races of the day, with five boats finishing in the top half of their events. The Rutgers Fall Classic ended the fall rowing season on a high note, showing the improvement the team has made over the past 10 weeks.