Rowing swept Duquesne and Fordham on the Potomac at the GW Invite on Saturday, also ringing in celebrations for the team’s 50th anniversary.

The Revolutionaries’ top two varsity eight and varsity four boats beat their opponents by at least five seconds each across the day of racing in their penultimate competition before the Atlantic 10 championships, which the conference will hold at Cooper River in Pennsauken, New Jersey, on May 16. The men’s club first boat lost a tight race to Washington State University and the University of Michigan with under four seconds separating the three teams but bounced back in the afternoon with a two-second victory over the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

The GW Invite, which the University debuted in 1988, included some of the top club men’s programs, such as second-ranked Bucknell University and ninth-ranked University of Michigan and on the women’s side typically featured conference competitors and local teams like Georgetown University.

The women’s varsity eight boat’s sweep included a row of 6:29.52 to Dusquene’s time of 6:38.21, and got even faster in the afternoon crossing the finish line in 6:24.32, ahead of Fordham. The varsity four boat also swept its A-10 competition winning both races by nearly twenty seconds with a 7:26.28 in the first race and 7:26.68 in the second race. 

As the women’s team nears the end of its 50th season, the year has been a mixed bag, evidenced by their rivalry win over George Mason and their struggles against competitive programs, like Cornell and Princeton. Rhode Island has taken home the women’s A-10 championship the past two years after the Revs won the 2023 crown, but the Rams haven’t yet looked as dominant as in years past. The 2023 season marked the first time in GW history that the team made an appearance at the NCAA championships where they placed 20th.

The American Collegiate Rowing Association ranked this year’s men’s club varsity eight boat ninth in the nation to start the season, although the team just slipped out of the April 8th poll with Minnesota moving into the top 10. 

The men’s program has shifted between club and varsity status throughout its existence, starting out at the club level in 1956 and being adopted by the University as a varsity sport in 1959. A series of University budget cuts in 2021 eliminated the men’s varsity team, however the team has been racing at the club level ever since, and the women’s team remains a varsity program. 

Men’s club rowing celebrated their milestone 70th anniversary with a banquet Saturday night that brought together alumni, including one of the original members of the first men’s club rowing team at GW, Sandy Morrison and Olympian Aquil Abdullah, who made history at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games as the first African American rower to represent the United States.

The men’s team three varsity eights all placed last in the first session. After the morning races, Vice President of Men’s Club Rowing Oliver Bjorkman who sat in the second varsity eight said the team didn’t race as cleanly as they would have liked, adding that they were partially impacted by the windy conditions. 

“For our boat personally, we got a little frantic and couldn’t handle the bad conditions,” Bjorkman said. 

The team bounced back later in the afternoon with the 1V8 boat taking home the win over North Carolina and Minnesota and the 2V8 boat falling less than a second short of doing the same. 

Bjorkman, who did not row prior to enrolling at GW, said he has grown to love rowing although it “sucked” at first. He said he is amazed the team has continued to exist through the support of donors over 70 years. 

“We have been through some ups and downs, but it is great that we’ve had 70 years of unbroken rowing, whether the school has cut us or upgraded us,” Bjorkman said. 

Looking ahead, the men’s team will have a scrimmage at Rutgers on April 25, followed by the Mid-Atlantic Rowing Conference championship on May 2 in Camden, New Jersey. Women’s Rowing will head to Raleigh for the Lake Wheeler Invite hosted by Duke on April 24 and 25.