PHILADELPHIA – San Diego Men's Rowing headed East over the weekend, competing in the highly-touted Schuylkill River Invitational, a gathering of some of the best teams nationally. 
 
The format saw a flight of three-team races in the morning, before a reshuffling and another set of three-team races in the afternoon. 
 
In this format, USD's 1st Varsity Eight of Jonah McDonnell, Derek Hissong, Rex Bales, Jacob Zelenko, Jacob Corfey, Sam Pigott, Jadyn Conover, Joe Tortella and Stephen Sayler faced No. 18 Temple and Jacksonville in the morning, then No. 17 Navy and No. 21 Drexel in the afternoon.
 
In the morning race, the Toreros (5:42.2) finished second to Temple (5:28.3), beating Jacksonville (5:46.2) in the process.
 
"The guys did a solid job of staying strong and holding off Jacksonville in the middle of the race," head coach Bart Thompson said. "The Schuylkill's course was tough; there's a turn about 700 meters in, which is uncommon, and the fast current and strong wind meant that the conditions were challenging."
 
In the second flight of the day, USD (5:35.5) finished in third behind it's ranked opponents, Navy (5:23.2) and Drexel (5:26.6).
 
"We had a nice first 1000 meters in the afternoon race, and with 750 meters to go, we were still about a length back of Drexel," said Thompson. "We did not execute our sprint as well as we wanted to. So, a good start, but still plenty to work on."

For Thompson, in his fourth year at the helm of the program, the weekend marked a special occasion in program history.
 
"To our knowledge, this is the first time that the team has ever headed east for a regular season spring race," he added. "We intend to make it an every-year occurrence, as it's a tremendous opportunity to test ourselves against programs for whom we have a ton of respect."
 
The team is back home training next weekend, before heading to the Western Intercollegiate Rowing Association (WIRA) Championships on April 26-27 at Lake Natoma in Sacramento, Calif.