Women's Crew's First Varsity Eight Earns First Team All-Ivy, Murphy Wins Ivy Coach of the Year
5/19/2015 12:00:00 AM | Women's Crew
PRINCETON, N.J. – All nine members of Brown University women's crew's first varsity eight have earned First Team All-Ivy honors, and head coach John Murphy has won Ivy League Coach of the Year, the Ivy League conference office announced on Tuesday.
Brown claimed its ninth Ivy League title all-time and its first since 2008 at the 2015 Ivy League Women's Rowing Championship at Cooper River Park on Sunday. The first varsity eight won its race with a time of 6:15.421, just .009 seconds off of Princeton's first varsity eight course record of 6:15.412 from 2014.
The Bears' first varsity eight included senior coxswain Molly Sandza (Washington, D.C.), freshman stroke seat Cicely Madden (Weston, Mass.), sophomore 7-seat Alia Shafi (Lafayette, Calif.), junior 6-seat Muriel Solberg (Rockford, Ill.), senior 5-seat Coco Schoeller (West Palm Beach, Fla.), junior 4-seat Ellie Place (Bellevue, Wash.), sophomore 3-seat Monika Sobieszek (Stoneham, Mass.), senior 2-seat Katherine McKeen (Piedmont, Calif.), and senior bow seat Whitney Naylor (New Canaan, Conn.).
Sandza, Shafi, Solberg, Sobieszek, and Place all earned Second Team All-Ivy in 2014.
Murphy, now in his 31st season as the leader of the Bears, won Ivy League Women's Rowing Coach of the Year accolades unanimously in the first year of the award's existence. Along with his wife and associate head coach Phoebe Murphy, he has guided Brown to seven NCAA titles and led the Bears to a berth in all 19 NCAA Championships.
The Bears garnered the Sally P. Shoemaker Trophy for winning the first varsity eight race – which decides the Ivy League title – while also capturing the second varsity eight, A varsity four, and B varsity four en route to its second consecutive points trophy at the event.
An automatic qualifier, Brown will now prepare for the NCAA Championships held at the Sacramento State Aquatic Center in Gold River, Calif., from May 29-31. The Bears are one of three programs to compete in all 18 previous NCAA Championships along with Princeton and Washington.
The Bears won the Ivy title with a convincing victory in the first varsity eight, defeating No. 10 Yale (6:18.900) by better than three seconds – about a boat length. Brown also crossed the finish ahead of No. 9 Princeton (6:19.703), No. 15 Radcliffe (6:24.538), No. 18 Cornell (6:31.128), and Columbia (6:45.418).
The crew won the team title with a total of 87 points, finishing ahead of second-place Yale (72), third-place Princeton (69), Radcliffe (64), Cornell (41), Penn (36), Columbia (19), and Dartmouth (19).
Brown also won Ivy titles in 1988, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2008. The league has determined its champion through the Ivy Championship since its inception in 2012. The league chose its champion through the EAWRC Sprints from 1974-2011.
