This weekend of May 13-14, marked the 83^rd Dad Vail Regatta in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, home of the largest collegiate regatta in the world. Crews from across the country gathered to battle for the title of Dad Vail Champion across a wide variety of boat classes. The Gordon women arrived with a smaller than expected squad due to Covid, but maintained an entry in each of the two sculling events contested at the Dad Vail for women (there was no women's quad this year). The doubles heats opened up with an exciting race for the A double of Lucia Hopkins '24 and Ellie Romeo '25 who finished 8 seconds behind Princeton to take second in the heats with a time of 8:01—the fastest time for DII and DIII schools across all three heats. The B double of Mattie Schoenfeld '22 and Emma Vande Brake '22 finished fourth in the same heat to NYU, landing them the last qualifying spot to the semis. 

Later in the day, Hopkins and Romeo laid down an almost identical time (.03 seconds faster) to finish third in their semi and be the only DIII school to qualify for the Grand Final. Schoenfeld and Vande Brake finished 6^th in their semi to qualify for the Petite Final, but had to scratch in order to get to graduation back up in Wenham on time! 

Saturday finals kicked off with a beautiful race from Lucia Hopkins in the varsity single, who jumped out to an early lead and then settled into a comfortable second place behind Oklahoma over the remaining athletes from Tampa, Drexel, and Colorado. Following her silver finish, she jumped back into the double to join Romeo for a victory lap in the Grand Final against MIT, Wisconsin, Princeton, and BU. While the Gordon girls finished 6th overall, they again established themselves as clear members of the IRA league and a dominant force amongst other schools of similar size and division. 

The Gordon Lights finish up their season at the Intercollegiate Rowing Association's National Championship on June 3rd-4th in Mercer NJ.