Heading into the 2009 fall season, the University of Wisconsin women’s lightweight rowing team held fairly lofty expectations. After all, the program had been the IRA National Champion five of the last six years and was a consistent powerhouse in the Eastern Sprints conference.

For the most part, setting the bar high yielded positive results. Once again, head coach Erik Miller’s squad took home the Eastern Sprints title — its sixth-straight — and won every race in the fall season and every race in the spring up to the national championships. Yet, at the 2010 IRA National Championships in early June, Wisconsin was bested by another perennial powerhouse in Stanford. Still, the loss was UW’s first in over two years, and the Badgers took home the silver at the IRAs to cap another successful year.

“Everyone once in a while, you’re going to not come out on top,” Miller said of the IRAs. “We actually had a pretty good race, but the team that beat us, Stanford, just had a little better race than we did. I think, overall, it was a pretty good effort. It shows we’ve got to come back and go a little faster next year.”

Perhaps the Cardinal were motivated by a chance at redemption in the IRAs, as they were victorious in the schools’ first showdown at the Stanford Invitational back on April 10 and 11. On the first day of the two-day event, the UW varsity eight defeated Stanford as well as Princeton, while the second varsity eight also topped Stanford’s openweight novice eight and second varsity eight.

“I thought that we were going to be pretty strong coming into this season,” Miller said. “It wasn’t surprising that we had a spring racing season and a fall racing season that were as good as they were.”

That April weekend proved to be one of the highlights of Wisconsin’s season, as Miller also sent some freshman boats to New Jersey for the Knecht Cup.

“The guys that went out to the Knecht Cup ended up winning the varsity lightweight eight race and also the novice heavyweight eight race, so that kind of showed the strength of the freshmen that we had last year,” Miller said. “That was a pretty big weekend for us, and it showed that we’ve definitely got some good depth and some good underclassmen who are going to be growing up and helping the team out in coming years.”

Individually, the Badgers also produced impressive seasons in 2009-10. Two freshmen, Abby Knight and Constance Chucholowski, raced with their fellow first-years for most of the season, but were moved up to the varsity boats for the IRAs. In addition, junior Mia Cava also impressed year-round on the ergometer rowing machine.

“Mia Cava, she did a really good job, trained really hard all of last summer and into the fall and was one of the top five erg scores,” Miller said. “I think she’s fourth on the overall list now of ergometer, the rowing machine, scores, all-time in the history of the lightweight team. So she’s somebody who came into the school and wasn’t necessarily super strong, but just really sort of turned it up and found a whole other gear and was really one of the team leaders this year.”

For the upcoming fall season, the Badgers’ mission is clear: Continue to dominate the conference and recapture the national title.

“We’ll get our first taste of racing many of the top lightweight schools in October when we go to the Head of the Charles,” Miller said. “That’s where we’ll see where we stand. Last year, we won that event and it set us up for a pretty good year. I expect us to be competitive and be one of the top lightweight teams and hopefully, at the end of the season, we come out on top.”