Today - Final Post of 2009

Best wishes, straight courses, fast boats, and smart training to all in 2010 from the Trinity Women's Rowing family to you and yours.

A look in the past...

An awesome banquet video presentation put together by Ed Slater -

Hartford Weather and Connecticut River Level Links added

I've added links to the Connecticut River levels measured at Hartford and to our weather system from Weather.com - they're also located in our links session down below on the right hand side. Hopefully this will make it easier to see what conditions we're anticipating every day.

I also want to recap the Joy of Sculling Conference as well as my coaching conference in Pennsylvania - lots to be learned. Can't wait to hear back from our accepted recruits! Best of luck to everyone who is in the midst of exams and feeling the crunch.

Coaching Conference

Just made it to a university in Pennsylvania for a very small coaching conference and had an easy drive through some very foggy weather. I'm looking forward to sharing some ideas and experiencing a little bit of a different university life.

I'll be heading to the Joy of Sculling Conference on Friday afternoon and that will run to Sunday - so I fully expect to be digesting a ton of new ideas and carefully evaluating if any of them can actually help our program.

Recruit Update & Sincere thanks...

I'm REALLY excited about our recruiting class for next year. We were lucky that the applicants we had in the ED1 round were accomplished academically and I think it bodes really well for next year. I especially want to thank our current team members who have been so giving of their time with hosting recruits. Now that our attention turns to ED2 and regular decision we're hoping to knock the ball out of the park and create a really phenomenal class for next year. I think it also reflects well on our development coach and recruiting coordinator Melissa Schomers who is doing an excellent job of staying in contact with our prospects and getting to know them well.

On another really heart-warming note, the team sent my family a really beautiful fruit basket from Edible Arrangements...My parents, rest of the family, and I were blown away by the thoughtfulness and generosity. I'll thank you when I get back to campus but it won't be really enough to match how much I appreciate what you did. The visitation was this evening and there must have been close to 175 people who came to lend their support and pay their respects. Tomorrow we'll have the funeral and I feel honored to be one of the pall bearers for Uncle Chris. Have a great night everyone...

250 Posts!

A quick thank you to all of you who are continuing to follow my sporadic blog posts...This thank you is the 251st posting and I'm happy to keep on firing thoughts into cyberspace. On another side note, I broke my toe yesterday and that may hinder my squash game and oly lifting regimen significantly. Ergometer, elliptical, and upper body lifting here I come!

A Few Seconds of Panic

Just blasted through a book by Stephan Fatsis entitled A Few Seconds of Panic that describes his time as a 43 year old writer turned NFL kicker for the Denver Broncos. I loved how he was able to weave the back stories of his teammates into the overall rhythm of training camp and the overall picture of the NFL as a business and as a way of life for the players, coaches, staff, and owners.

He turned to a number of different experts to try and learn how to kick a football including kick specialists, strength and conditioning experts, and sports psychologists. Of course, he also leaned heavily on the generosity of the other kickers and punters in camp and they were amazingly generous with their time.

I like to think that our team is improving on a daily basis because of that exact type of willingness to learn new skills, to take risks in training, and to be able to share our collective knowledge to achieve a greater result. No doubt we can be even better at it as time goes on and we reaffirm our common goals, get used to the idea of being willing to make and accept criticism, and really study the way successful boat movers approach the sport.

The other striking aspect of the book was how, unlike rowing at Trinity, players were absolutely at odds with management and felt very used and misled about their futures and their status and role on the team. Obviously the pressures on an NFL team are incredible but I really hope that our rowers have a good idea about what their strengths and weaknesses are, how to improve upon them, and ultimately know that their contribution to our team is critical from the novice level all the way to the our varsity eight.