Washington Sweeps IRA National Championship
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, West Windsor, N.J.
“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. When it’s going well, it’s contagious. The boathouse has been so great that way. It’s been really good internal competition that has raised each other up.”
Princeton repeated as women’s lightweight national champions, winning the varsity eight and adding to 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.”
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.”
Wesleyan held off Williams by two-tenths of second to win their first Division III national championship.
Commissioner Gary Caldwell, who has worked at 31 of the 121 IRA regattas, retired at the end of the event. “It’s been an honor and privilege to serve the student-athletes for all these years,” said Caldwell.
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