May 20, 2009
The Seattle Pacific women’s varsity eight crew will compete next week (May 29-31) at the NCAA Division II Rowing Championships on the Cooper River in Cherry Hill, N.J. That will be the second East Coast trip this month for the Falcons, who competed May 2-3 at the Dad Vail Regatta in Philadelphia.
Members of the SPU crew will be contributing rowing reports to keep you updated on their journey leading up to and during the NCAA Championships. This is the first of those blog entries, from freshman Katja Ibsen.
Hi, this is Katja Ibsen.
I hadn’t been to the East Coast before except for on my way to Sweden. I love to fly, but typically only get to enjoy it once a year with a short flight from Washington to California. I kept on thinking to myself, “I got to travel here for free”. Of course we had our responsibilities to take care of, but it was a really fun trip. Basically, we had some sort of Italian food every night for carbo loading, which was amazing. My eating habits are definitely going to have to change when the season ends.
It was really nice to hang out with my teammates when we all had the same schedule. We took so many pictures of ourselves on statues and random historical places in Philly. My favorite part of Philly was when we rented a boat from Boathouse Row. If you have never seen it, Google it because it is amazing. The inside was even better than the outside. There were so many trophies, placards, and tapestries from championships that took place in the 1930’s and beyond. It was really fun to be in a place where rowing was known to the public.
Usually you say, “oh I do crew” and people look at you a little weird for a while until they realize you are talking about boats and rowing. Then you get hand signals that mimic a stroke. It is quite entertaining, but you do not get that on the East Coast because they already know. My captain, Rachel (Savage) thought of an epic shot for documenting the shell house, it is a picture of us in unis holding our oars (see photo below).
This Tuesday we found out if we had gotten the bid to go to Nationals. We got it! I was at my desk writing an essay for Biology and my friend Degs (Katie Degner our 7 seat) texted me with the news.
I was so excited it was like a rush of adrenaline had raced through me. I tried really hard to do some more homework, but that didn’t really happen for a while after. It was nice to know that we were actually going. In my mind I was running over the fact that I have all of Memorial week off of school and I get to row in a NCAA Nationals Competition! It is going to be fantastic and a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Some people think we are crazy intense for doing what we do, but it is completely worth it.
Wednesday’s practice was better than Tuesday’s. We have been training so hard in the last few weeks and it is great to know that our time spent in the shell house on the erg and in the weight room are going to make us better for Nationals not post-crew season.
Wednesday morning we rowed over to UW to put our boats onto their trailer to be driven to Jersey. I am so excited that we are not driving over. It took us two hours to get our boats onto their trailer. We had to wait for their practice to be over and then they could help with the trailer. While we were waiting, I did some shell house perusing and suffered some shell house envy. They had an amazing facility at their disposal.
I am so excited we got the bid for nationals, but the homework load has been stressful since we have been traveling all quarter to get there. It is totally worth it. I have noticed that my time-management skills have been used more intensely than any other quarter I have had. It has been difficult to keep up with homework because we have only had two free weekends all quarter, other than that all of my homework was done during the week.
My professors have been very kind in helping me make the transitions of missing class time as easy as possible. It is nice that several of them are impressed with our endeavors and are excited to see how we do. We are going to be the last sport to finish their season. I am just happy that I have a week between nationals and finals, both huge tasks to take on. Thankfully, all of my tests are not cumulative, which makes everything a little bit easier.
It is amazing that we have been chosen for one of the at-large eight spots, especially since we have come from such a small team. Usually teams are made of 40 to 50 girls that the coaches get to choose from to make a varsity eight. We have 11 girls on our team, one coxswain and 10 rowers. I am really happy that both of our spares get to come to New Jersey with us, because not everyone got to go to Dad Vail. That is definitely going to be one of the improvements from the Dad Vail trip to the Nationals trip. It is kind of crazy that we are going back so soon because there will be only seventeen days since I had been there. Not long at all. Naturally Philly is beautiful and Camden, New Jersey is not far from it.
The Cooper River is only 10 miles from Philadelphia, so we visited there while we were back there for Dad Vail. The Nationals course we are racing on next weekend is going to be great. It is a straight race with buoyed lanes. I also noticed that it is a perfect size for a 2K race, like it was meant for rowing.
When we visited the site it was really windy. So windy that white rapids formed and they had to stop the regatta that was competing that weekend. Apparently, this is irregular weather for that body of water, so we will see. I am psyched for the competition to come and show our competition what we have been training to do.
Next week is going to be filled with excitement and the desire to show all of the committees what we can do. Many people think it is strange that our team is so small, but we will put our best foot forward and show them what we are made of.
-- Katja Ibsen
