May 13, 2001

Racing at the Lexus South/Central Sprints on Melton Hill Lake, the University of North Carolina rowing team finished its season with a strong weekend showing that included a Southern Championship for the novice eight. "This has been an extremely fast regatta," UNC coach Joel Furtek said Sunday as the action wrapped up in Oak Ridge. "We're proud of what our team has done and excited about the speed the novices are showing to carry into next year."

The novice eight was UNC's highest-finishing crew of the weekend, taking third in the grand final. As the top Southern crew, the UNC's novice eight claimed the Southern Championship.

The second varsity eight, racing in the petite final, finished fifth, good for 11th overall. Texas won the race in 6:56.8, followed by Tennessee (6:59.9), Kansas (7:03.0), Tulsa (7:10.4), UNC (7:15.2) and Kansas State (7:19.0).

The varsity eight, racing in the C final, finished third, behind Clemson and Indiana and ahead of Southern Methodist and Cincinnati. A relaxed UNC crew got out to the best start of the field and led through the first 20 strokes. The Tar Heels battled with Clemson through the first 750 before the Tigers pulled out to a five-seat lead and continued to pull away. UNC stayed with Indiana until the Hoosiers pulled away in the final 750 meters. The Tar Heels weren't finished, though, and mounted what Furtek called their best sprint of the year to hold off strong charges from SMU and Cincinnati.

"What a great way to end the year for the five seniors in that boat," Furtek said. "We had some goals for the race, one of which was a good strong start to set up a good base cadence and we did that. Another was to sprint as early as we needed to and we did that, and another was to leave it all out on the race course, to know that they could come in and have a complete race and put it all out there, and we did that."

Racing in the varsity eight were seniors Kimberlee Dilda, Laura Fogt, Erin Neppel, Dana Peirce and Robin Yamakawa, as well as underclassmen Layne Carey, Molly Benner, Allison Wheaton and Lauren Yoder.