During Ruth Frantz’s first two years on the Syracuse women’s rowing team, she and the Orange took home the Orange Challenge Cup, awarded to the winner of the varsity eight race featuring Northeastern and Pennsylvania.

Her junior year, though, events changed. For the first time in four years, Northeastern took home the cup, despite the race being in Syracuse. It was a feeling she said frustrated her, and one she carries to this day.

‘It stings,’ Frantz said. ‘It’s tough to have your friends and family come out and see

you race, and show pride for your school, and lose. That’s one of the hardest things about

racing.’

Frantz and the rest of the rowers will try and bring back home the Orange Challenge Cup this weekend as they race Northeastern and Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on Saturday.

The cup, though, is not what Frantz is focusing on this weekend. She sees it as a complementary piece to the ultimate prize: winning the race.

‘Winning the race is important, the cup is just extra,’ said Frantz. ‘Having a trophy is great, but the most important thing is winning the race.’

That doesn’t mean there isn’t the desire to bring the cup back to Syracuse. Since 1979 the Orange Challenge Cup has been awarded to the winner of the annual race among the Orange, Quakers and Huskies. SU has only won it five times – but four came in the last six years.

‘It’s very important because we had it for a few years and then last year Northeastern and we want it back here,’ head coach Kris Sanford said. ‘I think that all of our dual-races are important to us but anytime you add a cup to it, it’s something like a treasure you can bring home and show. When you can say we won this trophy back and have something to show it’s an exciting thing.’

The cup would also help the seniors in their attempt to help make the program better

than it was when they came in.

‘I think as a senior class, any race this season we can come out on top is something

we’re all going to feel really good about,’ senior Casey Irving said. ‘It’s really nice to have that stuff there and to know your class helped.’

Sanford said the seniors want to go out faster then they were as freshmen and are going to feel responsible for bringing that cup back home.

To bring home the cup, though, Sanford and her rowers know they have a tough challenge ahead. The Orange finished second in the varsity eight, second varsity eight and novice four at the Challenge last year, despite winning the novice eight. In the race to determine the cup, the Huskies’ varsity eight boat finished approximately 14 seconds

faster than the Orange. In a race during the fall, the Orange varsity eight placed 26th, while the Huskies’ placed ninth.

‘Northeastern was fast last year and they are fast this year,’ Frantz said. ‘We know it is going to be a tough race and not like last weekend where somebody blows the other two boats out, we’re going to head-to-head the whole way down the course.’

‘I think we’re going to have very tight racing all the way down through all of the events,’ Sanford said. ‘It’s going to put us in a different situation then we’ve been against Buffalo or Cornell and Yale. I think this weekend there’s going to be three crews racing side by side for the entire 2000 meters. I think it’s going to be close. It will give us a good opportunity to see what happens when we’re challenged.’

Published on April 4, 2007 at 12:00 pm