May 21, 2013
STANFORD, Calif. - Stanford women's rowing earned an at-large bid to the 2013 NCAA Rowing Championships, the NCAA announced Tuesday. It will be the Cardinal's fifth straight team appearance at the event.
The 2013 NCAA Rowing Championships will take place May 31-June 2 at Eagle Creek Park in Indianapolis, Ind. The event is composed of 22 teams, all required to field boats in the I Eight, II Eight and Four classes. Stanford is one of six Pac-12 schools to qualify for the event along with California, UCLA, USC, Washington and Washington State.
All racing at the NCAA Championships will be streamed live on www.ncaa.com.
Each class of boat will bold four preliminary heats on Friday, May 31. The top two finishers in each heat will advance to Saturday's semifinals. Boats that do not post a top-two finish in the preliminary heats will race in one of two seven-boat repechages Friday afternoon. The top two finishers in each repechage will move on to the semifinals.
Saturday, the top three finishers in each semifinal will advance to Sunday's Grand Final, with the bottom three of each of Saturday's races moving on to Sunday's Petite Final.
Stanford's I Eight earned the 10th seed in its class and will race in the second heat at 6:20 a.m. PT against No. 2 Princeton, No. 7 UCLA, No. 15 Brown and No. 18 Boston University.
The II Eight, seeded 12th, faces No. 4 Brown, No. 5 Washington, No. 13 Cornell, No. 20 Navy and No. 21 Rhode Island in the fourth heat of its class at 7:20 a.m. PT.
The Four, seeded 15th, will race in its class' second heat at 7:40 a.m. PT against No. 2 Ohio State, No. 7 Princeton, No. 10 USC and No. 18 Rhode Island.
Last year the Cardinal finished ninth in the team standings. Stanford won the team NCAA Championship in 2009 and in 2011 tied for the most points overall but lost out on a second NCAA title via tiebreaker (higher I Eight finish) to Brown.
At the individual boat level, the I Eight captured NCAA gold in 2009, silver in 2008 and bronze in 2011. The II Eight took gold in 2011 and silver in 2010.