This one, as they say, is for all the marbles.

Coming to the climax of an up-and-down season, the No. 4 Radcliffe heavyweight crew will pack up, head west, and defend its title at the NCAA Championships this weekend in Sacramento, Calif.

This will be the seventh straight trip to the NCAA meet for the Black and White, who last year became the first team not named Brown or Washington to take the NCAA crown.

The national championship was the centerpiece of a brilliant year for Radcliffe, which went 10-1 in dual races and captured an Eastern Sprints championship.

This season has not been such a smooth ride, with losses to No. 9 Brown, No. 2 Princeton, and No. 7 Yale earlier in the year.

But it appears that the first eight has turned the corner, demonstrated by its second-place showing at the Eastern Sprints two weekends ago in Camden, N.J.

At the meet, the Black and White topped the Bears and Bulldogs, and fell by a single second to the Tigers.

Since then, the boat has been working hard on its blade work, getting catch timing as clean and precise as possible while working on solidifying its rhythm to increase base speed.

“We have a very powerful middle four who have really figured out how to set up a rhythm in the middle of the boat that you can feel throughout the whole boat,” junior stroke Gretchen Weingarth said. “It’s this rhythm and power that it going to make it very hard for the other crews this weekend to hold us back.”

Individually, rowers have begun mentally prepping themselves for one of the biggest meets of their lives.

“I’ve been thinking about the kind of effort it is going to take to win, and steeling myself for the inevitable exhaustion and pain,” co-captain six-seat Lis Lambert said. “More importantly, I’ve been thinking about what really good strokes feel like, the exhilaration that comes from a perfect performance.”

At NCAAs, two other boats also contribute to team scoring—the second varsity eight and varsity four.

In contrast to the first eight, the 2V performed very solidly and consistently all year, only to find that selfsame consistency lacking at the Sprints finals.

“In general I think we’re totally psyched to have this second chance at the top boats in the country,” sophomore 2V three-seat Ella Spottswood said. “Anything post-season is really like a bonus round anyway.”

For success against the nation’s best boats, the second eight will need to recover the swagger it had all year.