Thu January 08, 2009
|
|
From the Launch
January 2007 Their back! Well at least most of them. Over the break we always lose some of the Novice. They get comfortable on the couch, think about training, decide not to and then when the New Year begins they realize how far behind they are and quit. Most of them don't even let you know, they just fade off into the adipose world of inactivity. The good news is that the athletes that return are the ones worth keeping. The Novice Women should be able to race a Novice eight and four and be competitive in both. We have introduced slide control and are now starting to be able to put the control together with the power they began to develop in the fall. This group is very similar to last season's team that won the petite final at the W.I.R.A. Championships. With the Novice Men we combined them with the Varsity for the 4 days of training before classes began. I thought the Varsity could help teach slide control and catches and also while teaching learn a bit themselves. Right now the Novice have exactly enough for 2 eights and a four. An injury would bring them down to 2 eights. We just finished the first week of classes and the last practice session until Tuesday was a battle between the 2 Novice eights. They did a 12k piece by sixes at 20spm and finished dead even. Great intensity guys. The Varsity lost 2 and gained 2, sort of. Though Joe Russo has not been training with us (because he said last time it was too emotional to leave) he has officially began his training down at Camp Pendleton for his second deployment. He will not be returning to Iraq, instead he will be going to Africa. Joe still has some classes to take to graduate so it will be nice to have him back rowing next season. We also just learned that Mark Caswell will not be able to return. He broke his arm about 2 weeks into the season and it is not even 50% healed at this point and might require surgery. Both Mark and Joe where in the Varsity eight last season but will have to finish their fourth season of rowing next year. That leaves us with only 2 seniors to lead this young group of mostly second year rowers. We did just add 2 transfer students, both with high school rowing experience and I am excited to see how they fit into our program. We are still only rowing 3 days a week as a group and I must say all 3 days last week where very intense. We are starting to do some pieces with stroke rates in the 20's and are doing most of the rowing by eights instead of sixes. I think some of the guys already wish they could go back to rowing by sixes at a 16. The end of this month through next will be our highest volume so let's hope for healthy bodies.
Scott Charette
|
