Men's Rowing Set for 113th IRA Championships
May 27, 2015 | Men's Rowing
Coach Bohrer Interview | Live Results| Schedule| Live Broadcast
West Windsor, N.J. - The Boston University men's rowing team will send four boats to compete in the 113th IRA National Championship Regatta beginning Friday, May 29, on Mercer Lake in West Windsor, N.J. The Terriers will be competing in a field of 24 for the national championship over a three-day period.
"This is always the biggest race of the year for all these teams," said men's head rowing coach Thomas Bohrer. "Obviously this is a huge tradition in rowing. This year is the 113th year of IRA competition. It's a time for the best programs in the country to get together and compete and it culminates a year's worth of work."
The Terriers varsity eight boat is seeded No. 8 after going 8-1 during its dual season with the only loss coming against No. 2 ranked Cal. The V8 will compete in the first heat race of the regatta at 8 a.m. on Friday when they take on No. 1 Washington, No. 17 Florida Tech, No. 9 Navy, No. 16 Oregon State and No. 24 Santa Clara.
The top two boats of each heat race advance directly to the semifinals on Saturday, while all other boats will try and advance by competing in the repechage on Friday afternoon.
Coming off a terrific silver medal performance at the Eastern Sprints, the Terriers' second varsity eight boat is seeded No. 4 and will compete in its first heat race at 9:45 a.m. against No. 20 Florida Tech, No. 12 Dartmouth, No. 5 Northeastern, No. 13 Navy and No. 21 Holy Cross.
BU's third varsity eight boat is seeded 7th and will compete at 10:12 a.m. against No. 18 Drexel, No. 10 Harvard, No. 2 Cal, and No. 15 Oregon State.
The Terriers' varsity four boat will also be competing over the weekend with their heat race scheduled to begin at 11:48 a.m. on Friday. The V4 competition will not be part of the overall IRA team point scoring competition.
The Terriers hope to keep the momentum going from their performance at the Eastern Sprints in Worcester, Mass. on May 17, when they advanced all five boats to the grand finals and won two medals.
"The IRA regatta is an opportunity to show the best teams in the country what we've been training for all season," said senior co-captain Kep Edwards. "Our goal is to get all four of our boats in the grand finals and to make sure we're racing to our fullest potential in all races. We've made some changes to our lineups and we believe all the boats have found new speed."
The Terriers will look to build on last year's strong performance at the IRAs when they finished 6th overall in team points and took home the Chapman Award given to the team with the largest increase in points over the previous year.
To watch a live broadcast of the 2015 IRA National Championship Regatta click HERE
FULL RACE SCHEDULE
LINEUPS
1v
Cox - Lauren Harvey, 8 - Aleksandar Marinkovski, 7 Fionnan McQuillan-Tolan, 6 - Matt Maginnis, 5 - Luka Miladinovic, 4 - Mackenzie Copp, 3 -- JP Aftring, 2 - Oliver Salonna, 1 - Vass Ragoussis
2v
Cox - MacKenzie Hart, 8 - Max Ponsen, 7 - Uros Marinkovic, 6 -- Kep Edwards, 5 - John Carter, 4 - Spencer Haas, 3 - Mike Kapp, 2 - Tomas Weaver, 1 - Alex Dillon
3v
Cox - Justin Goucher, 8 - TJ Ruijgh, 7 - Dan Marconi, 6 - Gregor Dierks, 5 - Will Aftring, 4 - Jacob Barker, 3 -- Austin Bald, 2 -- Drew Miller, 1 - Jamie Odgers
V4+
Cox -- Carly Skehan, 4 -- Tate Gill, 3 -- Dan Relle, 2 -- Nolan Solis, 1 -- Cam Pizzo
