A regatta lasts about six minutes, but going into the spring portion of the 2007 season, the Syracuse men’s rowing team focused more on the first couple minutes of a race than anything else.

The No. 10 Orange had its first opportunity of the year to get that quick start Saturday against Rutgers. The strategy seemingly paid off as SU impressively beat the Scarlet Knights on Onondaga Lake. The win allowed Syracuse to retain the Ten Eyck Cup – which goes to the winner of the annual Syracuse-Rutgers race – for consecutive years for the first time since 2002.

‘I think more important than the margins of victory was how we executed our race plans,’ SU coach Dave Reischman said. ‘I thought the guys did a good job of sticking to the plan and executing the things we talked about at practice, particularly in the first 1,000 meters of the races.’

After only 500 meters, Syracuse’s varsity eight was already up a half a length on the Rutgers crew. They never lost that initial edge, finishing with a time of 6:09.09 – more than 15 seconds ahead of the Rutgers’ crew.

Syracuse’s freshmen eight also pulled five seconds ahead of Rutgers, finishing with a time of 6:34.17.

The most impressive win of the day came in the final race, as Syracuse ran two varsity four boats that finished less than two-tenths of a second apart (Syracuse B boat 7:12.71; Syracuse A boat 7:12.90) but found the finish line 31.78 seconds before Rutgers.

Rutgers had won the Cup every year since 2002 before last year’s Syracuse team stole it back in New Brunswick, N.J. Nonetheless, the two teams have battled back and forth for the trophy since the tradition began in 1987.

This year the large gaps among the crews were surprising. Syracuse believes it was mostly due to its strong starts.

‘I think it’s easy to get caught up in seeing what some of these other teams are doing against a school like Rutgers,’ SU senior Chad Taylor said. ‘You need to race the first 1,000 like you’re racing the best crew in the nation. If you do that, which was our plan, you’re successful. You end up with these 15-second gaps rather than a six second or four second wins.’

Getting out to a quick start was a strength of the Rutgers crew, as well. Scarlet Knights’ head coach Steve Wagner said after winter workouts he thought his crew was also particularly good at starting the race.

‘We thought we might be able to get out in front of them off the start, but it didn’t happen,’ Wagner said. ‘Syracuse had a good start, and when we got behind I think it kind of distracted us a little. But Syracuse is just fast. I can not fault the Rutgers crew too much, Syracuse is a good fast crew, and they did a good job today.’

The idea of trying to break out early on against opponents is nothing strange in rowing. If you can put added pressure on the other team, your team will have the advantage. Since the Orange went undefeated during the regular season last year, there were few weaknesses in the team, but Reischman saw a flaw in the first 1,000 meters of the race.

‘We wanted to see if we could get a little more pace out of the starting sequence in the first part of the race,’ Reischman said. ‘We thought that was a weakness of ours last year. I think last year in some big races we found ourselves down at the 1,000 meters and had to fight back.’

The win on Saturday may have looked to be easy, but Reischman is quick to state that he has a career record of 2-3 against the Scarlet Knights, and only a few years ago it was Rutgers who was handing it to Syracuse. No team is going to pass up a win, but the Orange knows to keep things in perspective.

‘It’s not championship season racing,’ SU senior Matt Morrow said. ‘But it was solid from start to end. I think the important thing is we had a good race and we had a good win, and you carry the confidence into the next week.’

Published on April 15, 2007 at 12:00 pm