WORCESTER, Mass – The Buccaneers travelled to Lake Quinsigamond on Saturday to take part in the 2019 New England Rowing Championships, hosted by the Quinsigamond Rowing Association. The structure of the day's events is considered a true championship format for racing. Each crew rowed a time trial against the clock in the morning to earn their ranking time. From there, each crew is placed in either a Grand Final with six or seven entries, or a Petite Final, for the remaining entries in that event. 

A recent change in the championship racing format has eliminated the "novice" category, with those boats now being called "varsity" with higher numbers attached - 3rd varsity, 4th varsity, etc.  The Buc novice men raced in the 3rd varsity event. The boat finished their time trial with a time of 6:30.2 earned them a spot in the Petite Final (PF) where they finished in second place, behind Amherst College and in front of Connecticut College with a time of 8:09.1.

With the return of senior Tyler Vito (Foxborough, Mass), the Maritime men's 2nd varsity boat raced to a time trial finish of 6:24.4, qualifying them for a berth in the petite final. In the final they finished second behind Vermont with a time of 8:00.9.  Both Vito and Cyrus Bastarache (Middleboro, Mass) turned in great performances to cap their Maritime Crew careers.

First year coxswain Miah Archambault (South Yarmouth, Mass) performed like a seasoned pro, steering two great races and pushing her athletes to their best performance of the season. Veterans Captain Cat Swan (Ashland, Ohio) and Kenzie Hartman (Sudbury, Mass) helped calm the nerves of relative newcomers to the sport, Olivia Field (Littleton, Mass) and Colleen Weir (North Andover, Mass). After the race, all five women were in agreement they'd rowed as well as possible on the day given the extremely high caliber competition in one of the premier events at New England's. The crew finished sixth with a time of 8:52.2, behind the likes of Connecticut College, Middlebury, UNH, Endicott and Franklin Pierce University.

Our top men's boat has a lot of racing experience and made good use of race strategy Saturday.  With co-captain Tim O'Neill (Block Island, R.I.) racing as a Buccaneer for the final time, his teammates gave a herculean effort in both their time trial, finishing with a time of 6:00.6, and in their petite final, where they finished in second place just behind Johnson & Wales, with a time of 7:41.0, and ahead of Endicott.