UW men’s crew wins fourth IRA title in a row

The Huskies men’s varsity eight crew did it again Sunday, winning the Intercollegiate Rowing Regatta at West Windsor, N.J. The fourth title in a row matches the record for an event that began in 1895. Overall, the program took home three gold medals, a silver and a bronze to win the Jim Ten Eyck trophy as overall points champion for the eighth consecutive year.

Cal, which pressed the Huskies in three previous meetings this season and beat UW in Saturday’s semi-final, came out fast again, but the Huskies overtook the Bears as well as Brown, which finished second.

The Huskies’ boat, which featured five new rowers and a new coxswain since last year’s triumph, won their 16th IRA title with a time of 5 minutes, 37.113 seconds. Brown was 5:39.626 and Cal third  5:42.626. Princeton, Harvard and Yale rounded out the six-team grand final.

“Cal’s a team that starts really fast and puts a lot of pressure on us and tries to control the race,” said UW coach Michael Callahan. “We wanted to get on terms with them really early. We’ve had some explosive moments in our practices, and we saved it up for the last day.

“This was our last card to play. We were generally running even or from behind and today we put out a little bit different race tactic. The guys nailed it.”

Washington’s victory in the freshman eight was its third in a row and 23rd overall. The win in the varsity four was the fifth consecutive and eighth since the race began in 1968. In the first running of a third varsity eighth race, Washington finished a close second to Cal. The Huskies finished third in the junior varsity eight behind Cal and Princeton.

The Washington lineup in in the varsity eight: Cox – Stuart Sim; stroke – Grega Domanjko; 7 – Sam Dommer; 6 – Finn Schroeder; 5 – Henry Meek; 4 – Julian Svoboda; 3 – Marcus Bowyer; 2 – Sam Dawson; Bow – Myles Neary.