Our sincerest of apologizes to all the members of the women’s crew team who have competed in two regattas since March 29 and have not received ample coverage from the Argus Sports section. Our bad, writers are hard to come by these days.

After a grueling spring break trip to Florida, women’s crew returned to New England to face some serious competition from Coast Guard Academy, Holy Cross and Mount Holyoke College at a March 29 regatta in Worchester, Mass. Though the team had endured weeks of early-morning runs and even earlier mornings on the water prior to competing, it couldn’t get a stroke on its opponents. The first varsity eight was the only boat to compete in this opening regatta of the season, unfortunately crossing the aquatic finish line fourth and last. The first eight, consisting of Emilie Kimball ’11, Catherine Steidl ’11, Elizabeth Holden ’11, Sofia Warner ’09, Elaine Lauriat ’09, Rebecca Schofield ’11, Beth Ogata ’09, Linnea Damer ’10 and coxswain Jinny Jang ’08, finished 31 seconds behind Coast Guard, the winning boat, and 18 seconds behind the third-place finisher, Mount Holyoke.

The team traveled back to Worcester the following weekend and showed solid improvement, finishing second amongst a field including Colby College, Smith College and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Hopefully, the team will maintain this type of result as it was only four seconds off of Smith, who won the race with a time of 7:06.3. Wesleyan outpaced Colby, the third-place finisher, by six seconds with a time of 7:10.6. Perhaps a shuffling of the first eight contributed to the team’s success. During this April 5th regatta, the team was made up of Holden, Schofield, Kimball, Steidl, Sam Schilit ’10, Warner, Lauriat, Damer and Jang.

A most positive result for the future of Wesleyan women’s rowing came with the first-place finish of the team’s novice eight. The novice eight competed against Smith ’A’ and ’B’ boats as well as a novice boat from Connecticut College. Wesleyan finished with a time of 7:42.1, seven seconds ahead of second place finisher Smith ’A’ and a full minute ahead of the last-place boat, Smith ’B’.

The women’s crew team next competes against Tufts, Bates and New Hampshire this coming Saturday in Malden, Mass.