Men's Crew Set for 121st IRA Championship

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The Brown Bears are set for the 121st IRA Championship, beginning on Friday, May 31 and continuing through Sunday, June 2 at Mercer Lake in West Windsor, New Jersey.

Brown's Varsity 8 is seeded second, the Second Varsity is the nine-seed, and the Third Varsity is the seeded seventh at the National Championship.

FRIDAY HEATS

Brown's quest for a title kicks off with opening heats tomorrow morning.
The Varsity 8 races at 8:20 a.m. against Penn, Columbia, MIT, Wisconsin, and Northeastern.
The 2V8 races at 9:10 a.m. against Washington, Northeastern, Georgetown, and Wisconsin.
The 3V8 is set for a 10 a.m. heat against Princeton, Drexel, Northeastern, and Santa Clara.
The Varsity 4 has a time trial at 11:40 a.m. against Cal, Dartmouth, FIT, Harvard, Holy Cross, Navy, Northeastern, Stetson, and Washington.

CHAMPIONSHIP BREAKDOWN

The 24 programs in the field compete for an IRA Championship based on a points system that weighs the finish of each boat in its respective race.
The Championship begins with heats for each of the three boats – the first varsity eight, second varsity eight, and third varsity eight – on Friday. The top two boats from each heat advance to the A/B semifinals while the remaining crews proceed to the repechage races on Friday afternoon. The top crew from each repechage also advances to the A/B semifinals while the remainders are placed in the C/D semifinals.
From there, the top three boats in each of the A/B semifinals move onto the upper final with the remainder proceeding to the lower final. The process repeats for the C/D semifinals to the third and fourth level finals.
In the finals, each boat earns points based off its finish in its race, and the program with the most points between its three crews at the conclusion of all the races is awarded the James Ten Eyck Memorial Trophy.

THE 2024 FIELD

A total of 24 boats will race for the Varsity 8 crown, 23 boats will race for the Second Varsity 8 title, and 19 boats will race for the Third Varsity 8 crown.
Brown is one of 19 programs to have a boat in each of the three races. Columbia is the lone Ivy League programs without three boats competing.

SPRINTING TO JERSEY

Brown enters the IRA Championship coming off a first-place Varsity 8 finish at the 2024 Eastern Sprints.
The Bruno crew came-from-behind to knock off previously unbeaten and top-ranked Princeton to win the final race of the day and earn Ivy League Champion and First Team All-Ivy honors.
It marked Brown's first gold medal in the V8 at the Eastern Sprints since 2012 and the eighth in program history.

ALL-IVY HONORS | Release

Head Coach Paul Cooke '89 picked up Ivy League Coach of the Year honors for the second time in three seasons following Brown's performance at the Sprints.
Brown's Varsity 8 crew of Connor Brown, Ian Burnett, Jack DiGiovanni, Gabriel Mahler, Enno Mönch, Oliver Page-Kuhr, David Person, Willem Stoop, and Nathan Swidler earned First Team All-Ivy honors with the first-place finish at the Eastern Sprints.
Additionally, Burnett picked up Academic All-Ivy honors as a senior concentrating in Computer Science – Economics.

CUP SEASON

Brown re-captured the Atalanta Cup with a Varsity 8 victory over Dartmouth on the Seekonk River in April.
The Bears also claimed the Dreissigacker Cup from Northeastern on the Charles River.
Bruno retained the Michalson Cup over Boston University in the home opener on the Seekonk in late March.

2023 IRA CHAMPIONSHIP

Brown finished sixth in the team standings at the 2023 IRA Championship a year ago with the Varsity 8 taking seventh and the 2V8 and 3V8 both finishing sixth.
Just four seniors raced at the 2023 IRA Championships with 22 Bears returning from last year's Championship squad.

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Players Mentioned

Connor Brown

Ian Burnett

Jack DiGiovanni

Gabriel Mahler

Enno Mönch

Oliver Page-Kuhr

David Person

Willem Stoop

Nathan Swidler

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