Courtesy of UR Athletics
It was a turbulent weekend in Ithaca for the UR women’s rowing team. With a cold wind blowing at nearly 35 mph, the women’s 1V and 2V—varsity one and varsity two—boats faced particularly tough conditions.
While the race was planned for the morning, the biting wind forced the three teams to wait until the afternoon to compete in the race, which was shortened from its normal distance of 2km to only 1500m.
To cope with the suspense, Lilly Camp, a crew member of the 2V, described how the rowers “sought refuge in the Ithaca boathouse, ate food [and] talked to each other.”
However, the rowers didn’t let the chilly interruption waste their months of intense training.
Rochester competed against two of its biggest rivals in New York State—Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and Ithaca College.
The 1V managed to overpower RIT’s crew, and lost by only a close margin to Ithaca.They played strong and “showed well against RIT and Ithaca,” Camp said.
For the 2V boats, the competition was more difficult. The team “battled closely with RIT, but lost to both crews,” Camp said. Although Ithaca won by “a large margin,” RIT was just out of reach.
“It seemed like the 2V just went hard fast and ran out of steam a little early,” Camp said.
It was a constant back-and-forth between RIT and UR; but, in the end, RIT gained a lead that UR could not overcome. “It wasn’t a terrible race, but that [we] can certainly do better next time,” Camp said.
Looking to the future, the team needs to recognize and examine what went wrong in the moment, and look to improve for the upcoming races.
“Recovering when they have bad strokes and making the second half of their races feel as strong as the first half” Camp said. Generally, the goal is for the race to “feel good” and to “row fast,” she explained.
The next race for the UR Women’s Rowing team is next weekend in Lowell, MA, against most competitive DIII teams in the nation. They will be facing up against UMass-Lowell, Colby, Wellesley, Bates and Trinity, and UR is excited to see how they will stack up against big name teams.
Troadec is a member of the class of 2018.
