The WSU women’s crew team will travel out of state this weekend to face some of the top teams in the nation.

The Cougars travel to Clemson, S.C., to take on steep non-conference competition at Lake Hartwell.

“I think when you have an event with 21 teams, you do not have an opportunity to have a down race,” said Head Coach Jane LaRiviere in a press release. “This is very similar in many ways to the NCAA Championships. To be successful at the NCAA Championships, you have to get faster as the event progresses.”

The expectations are high for the WSU rowers this weekend as they go in to face tough competition.

“We are all pretty confident, and we know it will be pretty tough competition,” sophomore Jordan Watson said. “Especially since it’s out of conference. It will show us where we are compared to the rest of the country.”

Junior rower Mickey Aylard views the cross country trip as an opportunity for the team to put its best foot forward and prove it deserves its national ranking.

“We’re going in with a target on our back,” Aylard said. “I know there’s a lot of schools that will be after us, so we just have to go and have the best race as possible. It’s a pretty good opportunity to show the country how fast we are.”

Aylard said the recent races in San Diego and Seattle have helped the team improve its speed as it heads to Clemson.

Coming into the final races of the season, Watson said the team as a whole needs to really relax and take it all in because they still have a long way to go before the national championships where they want to be.

“Our technique can always continue to improve, and we can practice on coming together as a crew,” Aylard said. “We are switching our line-ups just a bit to try and find more speed. As we are changing a few people here and there, we just need to all relax and go with it and know that it’ll make us faster.”

After the Clemson meet, the team has one more race before Pac-12 Championships.

“For Pac-12 we want to increase our times. We want to always improve,” Watson said. “If we could just increase the time to get faster and closer to them. If not we just want to put out our best race. We know what we need to do to get there.”

To get there, these next few weeks are critical.

“We got to get 3, 4, 5 percent stronger in the next two weeks to perform in the national championships and be in those grand finals and be in the top-six,” Aylard said.

A live video broadcast of the final 1,000 meters of each race can be seen at www.clemsontigers.com.