Virginia Women's Rowing Team Receives NCAA Invitation

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May 15, 2001

CHARLOTTESVILLE – The University of Virginia women’s rowing team is one of 10 teams selected to compete in the fifth NCAA Women’s Rowing Championships scheduled for May 24-26 at Lake Lanier in Gainesville, Ga.

The other team selections include Boston University, Brown, California-Berkeley, Harvard, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio State, Princeton and Washington.

As a team selection, Virginia will send three crews to the NCAA Championships. The 10 schools competing for the team title will have one crew in each of the contested races – the first varsity eight, the second varsity eight and the varsity four.

Nine additional schools received at-large invitations to participate in the first varsity eight competition. Those schools include Ithaca, Michigan State, Rutgers, Southern California, Syracuse, Wesleyan (Conn.), Western Washington, Williams and Yale. The nine schools receiving at-large invitations in the varsity eight can win that competition, but without an entry in all three races are ineligible for the team title.

“We’re really excited to receive an invitation to participate in the NCAA Championships for the fifth consecutive year,” said UVa head coach Kevin Sauer. “We’ll represent the University of Virginia with everything we have at the NCAA Championships.”

Virginia finished third in all three grand final races to finish third in the team competition at last year’s NCAA Women’s Rowing Championships in Camden, N.J. Brown won the team championship for the second consecutive year by winning both the first varsity eight and the second varsity eight competitions, while Washington finished second as a team and won the varsity four competition.

Virginia has finished in the top four in the team competition at each of the four NCAA Women’s Rowing Championships. The Cavaliers finished fourth in 1997, third in 1998, second in 1999 and third last year.

The women’s rowing team is in its sixth season as an intercollegiate sport at UVa.