Monday, June 2, 2025

Splashes Of Happiness

There are two kinds of pictures of rowing races with splashing water in them — one good, one bad.

For the bad kind, those are the ones that take place during a race. Splashing during a race? Not a good thing. 

You want all of your rowers in complete sync, all your oars in the water, as it were. Splashing is counter to that.

Ah, but after the race? If you're splashing, you're celebrating. 

Look at this picture and tell TigerBlog which of the two categories it fits:

That's a happy one. You can tell easily by the smiles and the triumphant fists.

This picture immediately vaults into the pantheon of great shots that TB has seen during his time at Princeton. 

And why wouldn't the people in the boat be happy? That's a national championship celebration right there. 

Or, more fittingly, another national championship celebration. 

Call it Splashes of Happiness. 

The celebratees are the Princeton first varsity 8 lightweight women's rowing team this weekend at the IRA championships on the Cooper River. Princeton won the 1V race and the Commissioner's Cup points trophy and has now put together a five-year winning streak of national championships.

And how do you build something like this? Well, this is the post-racing quote from lightweight women's coach Paul Rassam:

"We have some proud, ferocious racers on our team. They took some anger to the handle and threw down hard. Our boats raced with a lot of aggression and belief in those finals. I saw a lot of courage out of them. The team points trophy is a tribute to our walk ons. We had four walk ons in the four. Coach Chris welcomes these athletes in and teaches them the technical aspects of the sport very well. Our experienced recruits help teach them how to be collegiate varsity athletes - the mentality and the drive and the discipline. It's a full family effort." 

Winning a championship happens when you have great personnel. Winning multiple championships, or building the kind of program that consistently competes at a championship level, is accomplished when you put together the kind of culture that breeds these outcomes. 

TB has seen it for decades at Princeton, across so many different sports. Culture matters. In a big way.

As for the racing he 1V once again was dominant, sprinting away from the field from the start and winning by more than three full seconds. Princeton's time of 6:19.320 was an IRA women's lightweight record.

This all came after the 1V did not win its qualifying heat. That doesn't always necessarily translate into the final, and that was certainly the case for Princeton. 

Your Princeton women's lightweight 1V: Coxswain Elena Every, Cate Barry, Amelie McComb, Mimi French, Alice McCarthy, Emma Mirrer, Kalista Whildin, Claire Brockman and Hannah Hoselbarth.

This weekend marked the national championships for all four Princeton rowing teams. 

The men's lightweights finished fourth overall, while the men's heavyweights were fifth. Both of those were IRA events, which were also on the Cooper River.

Meanwhile, over on Mercer Lake, the NCAA women's championships were held this weekend as well. If you're unfamiliar with how this all works, the NCAA only has a championship for the women, which usually means open women. The other national championships are from the IRA regatta.

Princeton is one of three schools that has qualified for every one of the NCAA rowing championships, dating back to 1997. The Tigers finished sixth overall this weekend. 

The highlight was a third-place finish for the 2V, its first medal since 2014. 

Again, culture matters.

And that's something that the Princeton Boathouse has plenty of, and always has. It starts with the coaches — Rassam, Lori Dauphiny, Greg Hughes and Marty Crotty — and flows through every rower who walks through the doors. 

It's why you'll see way more Splashes of Happiness at Princeton than anything else.


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