A Battle in the Rain.

As most East Coast Coaches donned rain slicks and knee high boots to muck through the Ankle deep muck of the Cooper, and Carnegie, Buffalo paraded a deep squad of Varsity women down the course at the Knecht, Harvard beat Brown in the Basin, Yale HW Men beat Dartmouth in New Haven, the Harvard lights trounced Dartmouth sweeping the Biglin Bowl and the Yale and Penn Varsity 150's bested Columbia in New York.

Racing is now in full effect as national team hopefulls took to Mercer Lake for the first installation of their Spring racing series in the form of the Spring Speed Order. Andy Quinn, of Undine Barge Club and Rutgers University won the men's light single in a time of 7:25.953 followed in short order by USRowing's Tom Paradiso, GMS's Jonathan Winter, and USRowing/Malta's Shane Madden. Pocock's Keneth Mcmahon and Vesper's Dan Scholz rounded out the "A" final.

The Lightweight women's single was won by Abby Broughton and followed by Meghan Sarbanis and Kristin Hedstrom.

In Michelle Guerette's absense Margot Shumway won the women's 1x in 7:57.

Who's the tops?

"Phew, those are some nasty ladies" said one spectator last weekend who watched Michigan unravel #2 Brown and #8 Princeton in Princeton to win their opener in style. They rolled on this week to capture the Jessop-Whittier Cup for winning the San Diego Crew Classic, besting most of the country's top 10 in just 2 weeks of racing. UW, USC, Wisco,OSU, WSU, Princeton, Brown and Oregon have now all fallen to the Wolverines but they will have to revisit most these battles in the coming weeks to weather a tough dual season. Coach Mark Rothstein, who has been at U of M since the Club days has his girls tuned up for what looks like a signature season. They will certainly have to contend with the likes of Yale, Michigan State, and Stanford for the National Title.

Meanwhile the deck has been reshuffled for the lightweight men and it is anyone's guess who will be the IRA Champion this year. Navy, after landing on the podium last year at the IRA has now lost to Yale and Princeton in consecutive weeks, and Yale surprisingly fell to Georgetown last weekend in New Haven, something few could have anticipated. In fact Georgetown does look like an entirely different group and their 2008 Freshman class; who place 2nd at Eastern Sprints last year, have already begun to contribute. They pulled double duty last Saturday piecing in New Haven, defeating Yale and then falling to Harvard in Princeton. Meanwhile, the lost lambs of Delaware who's Eastern Sprints Invitation seems to have gotten lost in the mail nearly nipped Dartmouth in Worcester, loosing to them by just .2 of a second. Under new Head Lightweight Coach, Joe Federici, the Delaware lightweights have shown a spark of old form, but at present it seems that "the man" has in fact kept them down and the Blue Hens may not get an opportunity to match up against the best of the best at Eastern Sprints or the IRA.

If we learned anything from last year's lightweight dual season, it's that trying predict the outcome of the Eastern Sprints or the IRA is virtually impossible so we simply won't try here. Though this could shape up to be one of the most dramatic seasons in recent memory.

Mike Teti's California Bears have won this year's Copley Cup at the San Diego Crew Classic edging UW and Harvard by just 2 seconds. Stanford, Brown, and Princeton rounded out the Grand Final. This weekend Brown will again face Harvard, Columbia will battle Princeton and Penn for the Child's Cup, and Northeastern will battle Tom Bohrer's Terriers for the Arlett Cup. UW will revist their battle vs. Stanford on April 17th.

This year's collegiate rowing season is providing more drama than last season's Bachelor and its only going to get hotter from here.