Badger Men Earn Second at Head of the Charles
October 21, 2007 | Men's Rowing
The Wisconsin men's rowing team began its fall season in grand style Sunday at the 43rd annual Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston. The Badgers competed in the Championship Eight event, finishing first collegiately, and second overall.
Wisconsin's time of 14:30.018 earned them second place out of 44 teams, trailing only U.S. Rowing, who took first place in a time of 14:03.711. Three other schools finished within second of the Badgers as Brown placed third in a time of 14:31.9. Trailing them was Princeton and California who took fourth and fifth places, respectively. Princeton finished in 14:32.2 and Cal completed the course in 14:35.7.
"By any measure, today was a pretty good row," said head coach Chris Clark. "It was a very light group of guys. They are not very impressive to look at as far as the classic rowing group. We weighed them in with a 182-pound average. That is pretty light for heavyweight rowing.
"With all that in mind, it was pretty surprising. I think it was just a real good row. The good news is we managed to get a little bit ahead of the other colleges. The bad news is all of the other colleges are right there. We're hardly running away from the field, but that doesn't diminish for these guys, an excellent row. We haven 't won the college division since 2002."
Wisconsin's relatively light lineup included coxswain Adam Barhamand (Naperville, Ill.), Joe McMullin (Woodbridge, Va.), Grant James (Dekalb, Ill.) , Ross James (Dekalb, Ill.), Derek Rasmussen (Darnestown, Md.), Ed Newman (Palos Park, Ill.), Ken Rueden (De Pere, Wis.), Ken McMahon (Ladysmith, Wis.) and Anthony Hoell (Mequon, Wis.).
The Head of the Charles, which draws over 300,000 spectators each year, is the world 's largest two-day regatta. The difficult course travels upstream along the Charles River, cutting under five triple-arch bridges. At last year's event the Badgers Championship Eight took sixth place overall and fourth collegiately in a time of 14:34.9, just 10 seconds out of third place.
The Badger women were also competing at the Head of the Charles this weekend. The women 's lightweight eights took second collegiately and third overall in 17:22.141.
A compete list of results from the 2007 Head of the Charles Regatta can be found at hocr.org.
The men's crew team will be competing again next weekend as they race at the Head of the Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa next Sunday.
"With the temperature around 75 in the middle of October, it may have been the largest crowd I've ever seen here," added Clark. "It was absolutely jam-packed. This was an excellent start to the season and we press ahead from here."
