Huskies Set for Grand Finals
Pennsauken, N.J. - The University of Connecticut women's rowing team will compete in four races Saturday after advancing three boats past the qualifying round Friday morning. Each of the V8+, 2V8+, and V4+ placed taking 3rd, 2nd, and 3rd respectively. Conditions were fair with a slight headwind from the Northeast. Of today's success, Coach Jen Sanford said, "It's a good feeling having all boats in the grand finals tomorrow. I'm really excited to see how the races play out, a lot of the teams here are similar in speed and I think the fight for medals tomorrow is going to be intense in every race. We've had two good weeks of practice leading up to the championship. If we can row with confidence, we will have great results tomorrow."
The race marks the final competition for senior captain Molly O'Neill who said, "It was a really exciting day here today. In the varsity four specifically I think that we're in really good spot for tomorrow. We ended up third so we're going to the grand final. We were only three seconds off of UCSD so that's going to be a very close race tomorrow. Looking at the times in the other heat...it's a [very small] margin with us so it should be a very tight grand final. We're very excited to be going there and seeing all boats on the team advancing to grand finals is exciting. I think that everyone's ready, we've worked very hard and we're all just happy to be here. [On her final UConn race] It's really really bitter sweet. It's crazy to think that tomorrow is the last time i'm going to race for UConn but I think that this is the perfect race to do it. It's really cool to see our progress since freshman year. Last year we were fifth overall [in conference]. This year it's just really exciting to continue watching us build on that. It looks good for tomorrow."
Joining her teammate for comments post-race was Cate Esparza who said, "Today we felt like we had a really overall solid performance...a lot of consistency throughout the entire race. We're really looking forward to tomorrow for the grand finals because I think that's where we're going to give it 110% and really bring it tomorrow and just give it everything we got."