May 28, 2009
The Seattle Pacific women's varsity eight crew competes this week (May 29-31) at the NCAA Division II Rowing Championships on the Cooper River in Cherry Hill, N.J. Members of the SPU crew will be contributing rowing reports to keep you updated on their journey to the NCAA Championships. This is the second of those blog entries, from senior Holly Allan.
Hi, this is Holly,
We are here in New Jersey for our championship finally! It is really hard to believe that we are actually here and that this is actually the championship. I remember my freshman year, when we were at the West Coast Championships, calling my dad and telling him how excited I was and how surreal it was to be at an event like that. This is so much bigger than that was, but I think it is going to take until we actually get out and race tomorrow for it to really sink in.
This past week, we tapered out workouts so our muscles were fresher for racing this weekend. With leaving so early in the week, and it being so close to finals, we were all cramming to get projects done, study for exams, etc. Some professors just let us turn in everything and take tests when we get back, but sometimes it is easier to just get them done with beforehand. Everyone also brought homework to work on while we are here. Even with all that work we have had to do, we had a couple of good practices before coming out.
Wednesday morning we got up extra early to have practice at 4:30 a.m. We just went out for a quick row since we would be traveling all day, and then we all showered and left the shell house for the airport at 6:30. It is about a 6 hour flight back here and along with the time change and a few flight delays, it was about 5:30pm before we got in.
Today we went out to the Cooper River course for practicing in the morning. We had to rig our boat and then we headed out on the course. The launching docks are just past the end of the course, so our warm up is rowing down to the start. After we rowed the course we came back for refueling. They have big pretzels for us from a Philadelphia pretzel company! We planned on going back out for another row in the morning, but the course closed just a few minutes before we were going to head out, so we had to wait until the afternoon. It had been cloudy for most of the morning but right when we went out for our second row, it suddenly got sunny and reached about 80 degrees.
It is supposed to be hot again tomorrow, so it is nice that we will be racing in the morning. There might also be thunderstorms, but they are supposed to be later in the day too.
This evening was the banquet and we all got dressed up for it. There was a lot of really great food and Leslie Gudel, a former rower at UCLA who is currently a sports caster, was the speaker. She talked about all the great life lessons you get out of rowing. Being at the banquet was a lot of fun and there were so many rowers there!
While we were eating, some of us were discussing how awful it would be to be a lightweight in this situation because you would be avoiding eating much food in order to make weight tomorrow. Lightweights have to be 130 lbs or less and weigh in for each race. I rowed lightweight my sophomore year, and while I enjoyed it a lot, it was difficult to have to worry about making weight. Although lightweight rowing used to be a big thing, it has lessened in significance and there is no category for it in NCAA now.
It is amazing to see all the other teams here. Since we are an at large 8, we are one of the smallest groups here. Also the DI and DIII “team” is composed of more boats than DII, so some teams have more than 20 athletes here. And so many of them are so much bigger than us. I feel so short among this group!
I really cannot believe that this is the final weekend of my rowing career. I have been doing this for four years now, and it is almost over. Rowing has been such a big part of my life. Earlier in this week I had my last required erg and weight workout too. What a wired realization that was! I am really going to miss all of my girls next year. We are such a close team and have so much fun together!
Well, I am really looking forward to start racing tomorrow and I am excited to get out on the water and see what we can do!
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Holly Allan
