The women's rowing team looks to improve upon its fourth-place finish from last year when it heads to Clemson, S.C. this weekend to compete in the ACC championships.
The field--which includes Clemson, Virginia and North Carolina--has the advantage of well-established women's crew programs, while the Duke team has only been in existence at the varsity level for three years. However, the team is optimistic that its growing pains will finally yield success.
"It's going to be really hard, but it's good to see if we will step up. I think we will," said senior co-captain Yng-Run Chen.
The Blue Devils have beaten North Carolina twice this year already, and had encouraging results earlier in the season against Clemson.
Duke is hoping to build on this momentum this weekend and make a statement to the rest of the conference. "[Last year] we had a good showing, but we did not place as well as we had hoped to," said senior co-captain Whitney Dunlap. "This year there's nowhere to go but up."
The team hopes that the inexperience of previous years will yield a seasoned crew this weekend. "Last year, when we went [to the ACC championships] our varsity-eight consisted of six freshmen," Chen said. "All around, we are going to have very strong boats this weekend."
On this course, Duke's rowers upset Clemson in both varsity-four races at a dual meet March 25.
Unlike many other regattas, there will only be four- and eight-rower events. Regardless of how Duke performs, it will compete in the Central Regional Championships May 12-13 in Oak Ridge, Tenn., where it hopes to compete for a birth in the national championships.
we are hoping this will demonstrate how much we've improved, not just this year, but even this spring
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.