ITHACA, N.Y. — Cornell women's rowing returns home this weekend for the first of two consecutive home weekends, welcoming Rhode Island, Delaware and Bucknell to Cayuga Inlet on Saturday.

The Big Red will face Rhode Island in the morning session and Delaware in the afternoon, with Bucknell joining both sessions in the combined 2V4.

Racing will be streamed live on ESPN+ for domestic viewers and on Stretch Internet internationally.

Cornell enters this weekend coming off a challenging afternoon at the Princeton Invite on Lake Carnegie last Saturday, where epic headwinds magnified the power discrepancy against a ranked field. The varsity eight finished 13 seconds behind Princeton's winning time in the 1V8+ — slightly wider than the 10-second margin projected on paper heading in, though the crew came off the water feeling the conditions had pushed them around more than their actual speed gap would suggest.

The 2V8+ was disrupted by a crab in the breakage zone that led to a miscommunication over whether to formally protest, leaving the crew too far back to recover. The 3V8+ was the day's bright spot, battling Harvard throughout before pulling away to a 14-second margin at the finish — a promising sign from a boat comprised largely of freshmen and sophomores.

"In those conditions it was not enough," said Steve Coppola, the Staley Head Coach of Cornell Women's Rowing. "In order to hang with Princeton in those 20mph winds, we need some of our heavy hitters back. The team has taken a big step forward on the power front — everyone is faster. The next time we see Harvard at Women's Sprints, we will be pushing to be a lot closer with some better racing and ideally some more neutral conditions."

This weekend's opponents are familiar names on the regatta circuit. Rhode Island has been a perennial automatic qualifier out of the Atlantic 10, and Delaware figures to be in a tight battle with UMass for the automatic berth in the Mid-American Conference (MAC). Coppola built the out-of-conference schedule with seedings for Women's Sprints in mind, making Saturday's results meaningful beyond the win-loss column.

"We get a chance to show that we've jumped these schools and put ourselves in a different class of competition," Coppola said.

MORNING SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Subject to change
10 a.m. — 2V8+: Cornell vs. Rhode Island
10:10 a.m. — 2V8+: Delaware vs. Bucknell
10:20 a.m. — 1V8+: Cornell vs. Rhode Island
10:30 a.m. — 1V8+: Delaware vs. Bucknell
10:40 a.m. — 1V4+: Cornell vs. Rhode Island
10:50 a.m. — 1V4+: Delaware vs. Bucknell
11 a.m. — 2V4+: Bucknell, Delaware, Cornell
11:10 a.m. — 3V8+: Cornell 4V8, Rhode Island, Cornell

AFTERNOON SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Subject to change
12:45 p.m. — 2V8+: Cornell vs. Delaware
12:55 p.m. — 2V8+: Rhode Island vs. Bucknell
1:05 p.m. — 1V8+: Cornell vs. Delaware
1:15 p.m. — 1V8+: Rhode Island vs. Bucknell
1:25 p.m. — 1V4+: Cornell vs. Delaware
1:35 p.m. — 1V4+: Rhode Island vs. Bucknell
1:45 p.m. — 2V4+: Bucknell, Delaware, Cornell
1:55 p.m. — 3V8+: Cornell 4V8, Rhode Island, Cornell

LINEUPS
To be announced