The men’s and women’s crew teams wrapped up the fall season in stellar fashion on Saturday, Oct. 27 at the Head of the Fish Regatta in Saratoga, N.Y. In addition to earning top-five performances in the Collegiate Eight, both squads saw JV and Novice entries compete one final time before the commencement of winter training.

Both Cardinal teams had one entry respectively in their Collegiate Eight events, with the women taking fourth out of 20 and the men taking fifth of 19. Coxswain Ari Rudess ’15, rowers Avery Mushinski ’15, Lucy Finn ’14, Kayla Cloud ’14, Clare Doyle ’14, Nicole Stanton ’15, Emilie Johnson ’13, co-captain Robin Cotter ’13, and Emilie Sinkler ’14 rowed the women’s boat to a finish of 12:13.63, losing to NESCAC schools Williams and Conn College and beating Worcester Polytechnic Institute by only 1.21 seconds. Meanwhile, the men’s boat, piloted by Grant Nikols ’13 and propelled by Bryce Hollingsworth ’13, Ben Record ’15, Tenzin Masselli ’15, David Hinds ’13, co-captain Sam Hoefle ’13, Chris Nanda ’16, Peter Martin ’14, and co-captain Trevor Michelson ’13 clocked in at 11:04.73, an agonizing 1.99 seconds behind Little Three rival Williams. However, as a consolation for their efforts, the crew also bested the other two NESCAC boats in the event, edging Middlebury by a meager 1.26 seconds and coming in ahead of Tufts by almost 20 seconds.

While both the men and women would have delighted in beating all of their NESCAC competitors in the regatta, especially Williams, the teams’ narrow conference losses make this an eminently attainable goal. Hopefully their hunger will translate into hard work over winter training and success in the spring season.

Outside of the Collegiate Eight, the men’s and women’s teams had four entries each.

For the men, two entries in the JV Collegiate Eight finished first and eighth out of 10 with respective times of 11:16.44 and 12:24.34, and an entry in the Novice Collegiate Eight finished 13th out of 30 with a time of 12:52.47. In the Collegiate Four, Wesleyan men rowed to an impressive second place of 30 with a time of 11:57.66.

The women’s team had two entries each in the JV and Novice Collegiate Eight. In the JV Eight, the Cardinals finished fourth and eighth of 16 with respective times of 12:42.37 and 13:23.59, and in the Novice Eight they finished second and twenty-third with times of 13:44.11 and 16:36.87.

The high finishes of Wesleyan’s top boats give the team something to be proud of heading into the winter, and the success of the JV and Novice boats gives the team reason to have high hopes for continued improvement this spring and into the future.