Bucknell University Athletics
5th Annual Erg Armageddon Already Past And a Big Success For The Bison
3/7/2001 7:00:00 AM | Women's Rowing
March 7, 2001
Box\ Score
Lewisburg, Pa. - On Sunday, February 25, the Bucknell men and women's crew team's hosted the fifth annual Erg Armageddon in Davis Gymnasium. The event is very similar to the CRASH-B World Indoor Rowing Championships in Cambridge, Mass. held the same weekend. Bucknell, Lehigh, and SUNY Binghamton won the most medals at this year's event winning eight each.
In the women's events, four Erg Armageddon records were broken as well as one Bucknell record. Megan Rogers broke the novice lightweight mark with a time of 7:43.2 as an unattached competitor. The Varsity Lightweight and Open weight records where also broken at this year's Erg Armageddon by two athletes from SUNY Binghamton, Becci Conkling and Jessica Terry. As Meghan Haite of SUNY Binghamton ran away with the novice women's 500-meter dash and an Erg Armageddon record, freshman Margaret Coates (Stamford, Conn./King & Low-Heywood) brought home the bronze medal a Bison record with a time of 1:41.7.
Sophomore Lisa Baranik (Patton, Pa./Cambria Heights) and senior Jessica Smith (Apollo, Pa./Kiski Area) were the only other Bison women to receive medals at the event. Baranik earned her medal with a second-place finish in the novice open weight (7:37.7) and Smith erged her way to a bronze medal in the varsity women's 500-meter dash with a time of 1:51.4.
The men's team garnered four medals at the competition while watching three Erg Armageddon records broken. In only its fifth year, the Erg Armageddon saw records in the varsity heavyweight, 1000-meter coxswain race and varsity 500-meter dash broken by individuals from Penn State and Lehigh. Patrick O'Dunne from Penn State broke the varsity heavyweight with a final time of 6:15.6 while Eric Matthews from Lehigh broke his own record in the 1000-meter coxswain race. Matthews' teammate, Neil Welch, broke the varsity 500-meter dash with a time of 1:23.1 to keep the Mountain Hawks in the hunt. For the Bison, freshman Justin Faden (Toms River, N.J./Toms River North) broke the Bucknell record in the men's coxswain 1000-meter race when he finished with a time of 3:49.6.
Winning medals for the men's crew team were freshmen Charles Dickhart (Wayne, Pa./Episcopal Academy), Raphael Crowley (Skaneateles, N.Y./Skaneateles), Wil Hart (Sandusky, Ohio/Sandusky) and sophomore Michael Brooks-Williams (Minneapolis, Minn./John F. Kennedy). Crowley and Hart finished first and third in the novice 500-meter dash and their classmate Dickhart won the silver medal in the novice heavyweight race. Varsity Captain, Brooks-Williams, brought home a bronze medal for the crew team with a good showing in the varsity heavyweight competition.
One of two gold medals on the afternoon, Dickhart and Baranik joined forces to win the novice mixed doubles 1000-meter race with a time of 3:24.2. The Orange and Blue finished the Erg Armageddon with two gold, two silvers, and four bronze medals.
The Bucknell crew team will prepare for actual rowing over the next couple of weeks before its first competition at the Augusta/Aiken Invitational on Saturday, March 17, in Aiken, S.C.
