ITHACA, N.Y. – For the second-straight season, the Big Red women's rowing team will participate in the2013 NCAA Division I Women's Rowing Championships, earning one of the 11 at-large berths handed out by the NCAA Division I Women's Rowing Committee when the field was announced this afternoon.

“I'm so proud of the team effort,” said Hilary Gehman, the Staley Head Coach of Women's Rowing. “I really wasn't sure we could get there this year with the fact that we lost seven of our nine varsity eight member from last season. I knew it would be really hard and I cannot say enough about the work ethic of the team to start out the season with open water losses to Princeton, Yale and Radcliffe and to bounce back and be competitive across the board at the Ivy League Championship. We went in ranked sixth and came out fourth, and it just shows that we've really learned a lot from two seasons ago when we had a great regular season but then didn't perform well at Ivies and then were left out of NCAAs.”

The championships will be held May 31 – June 2 at Eagle Creek Park in Indianapolis with Notre Dame and the Indiana Sports Corporation serving as co-hosts.

The team championship is composed of 22 teams. Eleven conferences were awarded automatic qualification and the remaining 11 slots were filled with at-large selections to complete the championship field.

The team gathered in the Hall of Fame Room on the Cornell campus to watch the selection show and needed to wait until the announcement of the fourth heat to hear its named called.

“There are only 11 at-large bids and I was doing the math,” said Gehman. “When I saw Washington State come up, I knew they weren't going to take six Ivies. I was really hoping that they would take six but at that point, we knew someone would be left out. When Cornell popped up on the screen it was just complete relief to know that we made it.”

Teams qualifying for the championship as an automatic qualifier or as an at-large are required to field two boats of eight rowers and one boat of four rowers. For the Varsity 8, second Varsity 8 and Varsity 4 teams, all 22 boats will be seeded into four heats.

“It's a young team, but it's an awesome team,” added Gehman. “It's not just one boat. Of course the varsity is the boat that counts the most, but it all trickles down and everyone knows they need to do their job on race day.”

All-session and single-session tickets for the Championships can be purchased at www.NCAA.com/tickets through May 29. Beginning May 30, tickets are available on-site (cash only). All-session tickets are $40, while student and senior citizen tickets are $25. The tickets include all three days of competition. Single-session tickets are $15, while student and senior citizen are $10. Parking information is available at www.IndianaSportsCorp.org. 

The following teams were selected:

AUTOMATIC QUALIFIERS

School	Conference
Boston University	Colonial Athletic Association
Gonzaga	West Coast Conference
Marist	Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference
Navy	Patriot League
Notre Dame	Big East Conference
Ohio State	Big Ten Conference
Oklahoma	Conference USA
Princeton	The Ivy League
Rhode Island	Atlantic 10 Conference
Southern California	Pac-12 Conference
Virginia	Atlantic Coast Conference

AT-LARGE SELECTIONS

School
Brown
California
UCLA
Cornell
Harvard
Michigan
Stanford
Washington
Washington State
Wisconsin
Yale

QUALIFYING BOATS

Seed	Varsity 8	Second Varsity 8	Varsity 4
1.	Southern California	Ohio State	California
2.	Princeton	California	Ohio State
3.	Ohio State	Southern California	Brown
4.	Virginia	Brown	UCLA
5.	Washington	Washington	Washington
6.	California	Princeton	Yale
7.	UCLA	Harvard	Princeton
8.	Yale	Virginia	Wisconsin
9.	Harvard	UCLA	Washington State
10.	Stanford	Wisconsin	Southern California
11.	Notre Dame	Notre Dame	Virginia
12.	Michigan	Stanford	Notre Dame
13.	Wisconsin	Cornell	Michigan
14.	Cornell	Oklahoma	Harvard
15.	Brown	Michigan	Stanford
16.	Washington State	Yale	Cornell
17.	Oklahoma	Washington State	Oklahoma
18.	Boston University	Boston University	Rhode Island
19.	Navy	Gonzaga	Boston University
20.	Gonzaga	Navy	Navy
21.	Rhode Island	Rhode Island	Gonzaga
22.	Marist	Marist	Marist