Men's and women's varsity crews came out of the Mac-Guelph challenge this weekend with new shirts on their backs. The annual Mac-Guelph challenge is a traditional shirt held in the early season. Both schools face off head to head in varsity and novice eights down the 2km course. Afterwards, the losing teams in each race give their race shirts to the winning crew. 

The entire Guelph and McMaster crews stood on the docks as the first race of the day, the novice men, came down the course. The McMaster boat of Jason Chan(cox), Matthew Lauzon (stroke), Mark Morton, Daniel Mehrzadeh, Tyler de Jonge, Harminder Kang, Colin Dunlop, Rob Armstrong and Brad Roughton (bow) won the race with open water behind them to put McMaster in the lead after the first race. Three more novice races took place next, with another men's boat and two women's crews testing their abilities in their first-ever races, as they finished close behind Guelph.

The varsity men raced next, hoping to repeat last year's victory at the event. The heavyweight boat of Kaitlyn Akitt (cox), Erik Bertram (stroke), Aubrey Bensley, Tredon Simon, Michael DiDonato, Jordan Stevenson, Logan Madill, Ben Anthony, and Karl Zimmermann (bow) pulled away and quickly increased their lead in the last 700m to finish well ahead of their competitors. The lightweight boat was unopposed but put their racing to the test in a strong showing against the two heavy boats. 

The varsity women were the last crews on the water. McMaster's eight of Alina Barnett (cox), Jessica Hill (stroke), Leah Hayward, Yasa Ibragimova, Brynley Hanson-Wright, Kristen Power, Megan Wurtele, Myma Okuda-Rayfuse, and Sarah Zhou (bow) held strong one boat length ahead of the Gryphons for the majority of the race and crossed the line nearly nine seconds in front of Guelph. 

After a fun day of racing the team looks ahead to next weekend's Head of The Trent Regatta where they will race against all of the OUA teams for the first time this season.