CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The Wisconsin men's rowing program kicked off the 2023-24 season with two hard-fought finishes at the Head of the Charles on the Charles River. The Head of the Charles Regatta is the world's largest multi-day rowing event, spanning from Friday to Sunday.

In a 27-boat championship-eight field, Wisconsin finished in 18th place. Their time was 15:05.717, about 45 seconds behind first place USRowing.

In the championship four, a 13-boat field, the Badgers came in ninth place with a time of 17:09.661. They had one of the best paces in the entire race but lost their momentum in the third CBC stretch. 

Up next: The Badgers travel to Princeton, New Jersey on Nov. 5 to compete in the Princeton Chase.

Straight From the Shore
Head Coach Beau Hoopman

On the race(s)...
"I thought the guys did well overall. The intensity is there at the beginning of the race, just like last year.  I think the 4+ was first to the first marker and the 8+ was 10th.  We just slowly let it bleed out over the course of the race like a young weaker team would do in a headwind. I told the team at the beginning of the year that we would need to focus more on the second half of races, that's the only way we would move up to be competitive with the top-tier teams. Last year at IRAs we had the slowest third 500 of all the teams in our races. The second half of the race has to be our focus moving forward because we know we have the speed to keep up in the beginning. Great teams can close, but it's one of the hardest things to wrap your head around when you're exhausted-restarting the race.  
On the weekend...
"It was a good weekend with reasonable results all things considered. Coach Clark mentioned that this was the first time in a very long time we sent a boat that didn't have a single guy under 33 minutes for 10k, which is an elite standard. We're young, and not as strong as we'd like, but we're improving rapidly every practice. The most important thing is we will race, we just need to learn how to finish."

Head of the Charles
Oct. 22, 2023
Cambridge, Mass.
Charles River
3 Miles

MEN'S CHAMPIONSHIP FOUR (13 ENTRIES) Race #61 
1. Princeton A, 16:53.696; 2. Penn A, 16:47.600; 3. Georgetown A; 16:47.987; 4. Cornell A, 16:49.531; 5. Syracuse A, 16:57.065… 9. Wisconsin A, 17:09.661
UW Lineup – Coxswain Grayson VanLue, Jack O'Brien, Dylan Knanishu, Lukas Weinhold, Daniel Hintzman

You can view the full Head of Charles results here.