Bates women's eight takes second place at Head of the Charles
October 19, 2008

The Bates women's first varsity eight defeated 32 of 34 boats in the Women's Collegiate Eights division by a substantial margin. (Photo by Lincoln Benedict '09)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The Bates College women's eight took second place out of 34 boats in the Women's Collegiate Eights Sunday at the 44th Head of the Charles Regatta.  The result is the highest ever finish for a Bates crew. 

The Bates women overcame harsh conditions to finish the winding course in 17:15.364.  Sophomore coxswain Nora Collins navigated the cramped and difficult course to near-perfection, which allowed her rowers to focus solely on the speed of the boat.  Bates trailed only Williams (17:11.649) and handily beat out such recent NCAA Championships rivals as Trinity (17:32.846), Ithaca (17:54.680) and William Smith (17:59.464).  The result serves as a positive indicator for an exciting 2009 spring season.

On the men’s side, freshman coxswain Jack Mulvaney showed great maturity when he realized his boat would not complete the hairpin turn at Elliot Bridge and called his crew to a halt.  The process of getting the boat back on track from a dead stop resulted in a large amount of time being lost.  The end result was a 27th place finish, clocking in at 16:25.563, in ahead of the University of Rhode Island.

Live results at http://hocr.org/results/results.asp.

The team will wrap up the Fall Season at Colby for the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin Chase on Saturday, October 25th.