Delaware Wins the Men’s Points Trophy at Dad Vails for the Second Consecutive Year

In perfect conditions on the Schuylkill River, the Delaware Blue Hens captured the Dr. Thomas Kerr Trophy for Men’s Overall Points at the Dad Vail Regatta for the second consecutive year after medalling in six of their eight grand finals.

Starting the day off strong, freshman heavyweight James Poll took silver in the Men’s Single with junior lightweight Brian Kungl taking fourth. The Freshman Four pulled into the medal dock shortly afterward, beating Saint Joseph’s by over one length to take the bronze medal. Continuing the trend of great freshmen performances, the Freshmen Lightweights, racing in the Heavyweight category, dueled Temple all the way down the course, finishing one second behind the Owls but open water ahead of the rest of the field to take the silver medal. Moving into the Varsity boats, the Third Varsity Lightweight Eight made a furious push in the last thousand of their race to take silver, the first medal ever for this boat class.

In the Second Varsity Eight, a crew of mixed heavyweights and lightweights found themselves down early, in fifth place with 800 meters to go. The stern pair of junior Evan Montreuil and senior Nate Seidman dug in and brought the rate up to 43 strokes per minute to nip the Drexel Dragons on the line by 0.2 seconds to take bronze, matching the same result from 2017. The Lightweight Four finished fifth in their final before the Lightweight Eight, comprised of mostly Second Varsity Lightweights, defeated the top Temple Lightweights and held the top Mercyhurst Lightweights to one length to win silver. In the final race of the regatta with the Men’s Points Trophy at stake, the Varsity Eight took to the course.

A powerful start and aggressive base saw the Varsity Eight, a hybrid crew of six lightweights and two heavyweights, right in the mix before ultimately finishing in fourth place, about one length out of the silver medal. Temple won the Eight and set a new course record for the Dad Vail Regatta, showing the grit and toughness of a mostly Light Eight to hang with them for 2000 meters. With that finish in the Varsity Eight, Delaware amassed enough points to win the Kerr Trophy for back to back years, the first time this has happened since the Hens threepeated between 2008 and 2010.

With the official spring over, Delaware ends the overall 2017-18 season with the Dad Vail Men’s Trophy, dual wins over Penn, Georgetown, MIT, and Rutgers with additional finishes over Temple and Drexel, alongside a team-best finish at the SIRA Championship. Delaware will celebrate the graduation of fifteen seniors during the spring banquet on May 23rd.