PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania women's rowing team will make its debut at the Henley Royal Regatta this week, the Quakers putting their Varsity and Second Varsity Eights in the 24-boat field for the Island Challenge Cup.
Rowing for the Island Challenge Cup will start on Wednesday and continue through the final day at Henley on Sunday. A reminder that Henley features head-to-head racing between two boats across a 2,112-meter course, the winning boat in each race advancing to the next round while the losing boat is done for the week.
UPDATE: The HRR schedule for Wednesday has been announced, and Penn's 'B' boat will row at 3:35 p.m. local time (10:35 a.m. EDT) against the Edinburgh University 'B' boat.
Watch HRR Live! (YouTube.com) | HRR Race Timetable | Penn Boatings (PDF)
The Island Challenge Cup for Student Women's Eights was introduced in 2020 but not awarded due to the pandemic. In 2021, Oxford Brookes (UK) won the inaugural event, while Brown took last year's trophy. Athletes that have won U23 world championship medals are prohibited from this event.
Not surprisingly, US crews have made a significant investment in coming to Henley and racing in this event including NCAA champion Stanford, Texas—which won NCAAs in 2021 and 2022—Princeton, Syracuse, Harvard, Northeastern, and Georgetown. They fill out the draw along with two Dutch crews and a host of strong UK university crews including the prohibitive favorites from Oxford Brookes.
The Henley Royal Regatta concludes a busy month for the women, who originally arrived at the United Kingdom for the Henley Women's Regatta which ran from June 16-18. The last nine days have featured training but also chances to go sightseeing in Henley, London and Oxford.
"Our group has had an amazing couple of weeks over here in the UK," said head coach
Wesley Ng, the reigning Ivy League and College Rowing Coaches Association (CRCA) Division I Region 1 Coach of the Year. "You can feel the energy of a shared vision for our program competing at the top echelon of women's rowing. It's significant that we are planting our Penn flag firmly in the UK and we have started carving out a position, expectation and tradition that will impact our current and future rowers in perpetuity. I cannot wait for us to get racing!"
All of this comes off an historic showing at the NCAA Championship, where Penn's Varsity Eight rowed for the national championship and met its seed by finishing fourth while the Quakers took sixth place overall.
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