With the regular season finished, now it’s time for what many sports enthusiasts refer to as “the second season.”

And for the No. 11 Michigan rowing team, that second season started with the Big Ten Championships.

The Wolverines traveled to East Lansing where host Michigan State held the regatta on Saturday. All seven Big Ten teams with rowing programs were present, including No. 8 Michigan State, No. 13 Wisconsin and No. 15 Ohio State.

The morning started off well for Michigan as it placed in the top two in all of its heats, which put the Wolverines in the Grand Final (the top-four teams from the morning heats) in every event.

But the Wolverines fell short as the day went on. They had no first-place finishes, and only two second-place finishes — the second varsity eight and first novice eight.

“Coming out of the morning, we felt really good,” Michigan coach Mark Rothstein said. “We felt like we had a good shot to win, and then we just didn’t race well in the afternoon. You have to race your best if you’re going to win a championship.”

And for the second regatta in a row, the second varsity eight was the team’s strongest boat.

“They’re a pretty young boat, but it’s full of kids that are really coachable and work really hard,” Rothstein said. “They had a really good performance and we felt like they could’ve won their race.”

In fact, the boat was in the lead with 500 meters to go, but fell less than three seconds short of the eventual winner, Wisconsin.

Michigan will now have two weeks off before racing at the NCAA Central/South Region Sprints in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

And while the Wolverines are a veteran squad — the team has seven seniors — they know that it’s going to take a team effort if they want to improve in the rest of the postseason.

“The key for us in the next two weeks is just for each individual to get better, whether freshman or senior, junior or sophomore,” Rothstein said. “We need that to happen to get to the NCAAs and perform the way we want to.”

The upcoming event will feature a lot of top-ranked programs, which is nothing new for Michigan. The competitive Big Ten has been excellent preparation this season, as well as races against out-of-conference powerhouses like No. 2 Virginia, No. 11 Clemson and No. 8 USC.

“We’re lucky that we get to race against all six other Big Ten teams again in two weeks,” Rothstein said. “We just need to get better. We’re certainly not where we want to be and there’s a lot of areas where we can improve.”