Rowing Selected To NCAA Championship Regatta
5/20/2008 12:00:00 AM | Women's Rowing
May 20, 2008
EAST LANSING, Mich. - Michigan State rowing was selected to the 12-team 2008 NCAA Women's Championship, as announced by the NCAA Committee Tuesday, May 20. This year's championships will be held May 30-June 1 at the Sacramento State Aquatic Center in Gold River, Calif., as the University of California, Berkeley serves as the host institution.
"Obviously, we're really excited about returning to the NCAA Championships," said head coach Matt Weise. "And I think if we make a good push in these last days of practice, we have a great chance to be a strong competitor [in Sacramento]."
The selection marks the 10 appearance by MSU in the national regatta. The Spartans' last appearance was in 2006, when MSU captured a sixth-place team finish, setting a new program record. Michigan State first received a bid to the championships in its inaugural year as a varsity program (1998), and has competed every year since, with the exception of 2007.
Michigan State most recently ranked fifth before capturing the sprints title on May 18 and the Big Ten Championship on May 3.
Along with MSU, two other Big Ten schools received bids - Ohio State and Wisconsin - while defending national champion Brown also appears among the qualifying programs. Rounding out the final qualifying teams are California, Harvard, Princeton, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, Washington State and Yale. The field also contains at-large varsity eight crews from Clemson, Michigan, Southern California and Stanford.
Each qualifying team is required to compete two eight-member boats and one four-member boat. The at-large selections yield a single eight-member crew.
Full NCAA Championship information is available by visiting www.ncaa.com.