Bantam Bars Born

We're solidly into a New England fall that has featured a beautiful turn of the seasons. In between raking leaves yesterday I did a home gym project making our version of canned weights (The Bantam Bar). A little bit of a dirty process but nevertheless 15 new bars are coming home to roost in the Ferris Athletic Center.

The fall was a big shift for Trinity Women's Rowing as we fielded a large team than we have ever done before. With 4 full eights racing we raced at the Housatonic, Charles, and Schuylkill and came away with medals at all three with some excellent performances by our younger athletes and some growth with our varsity athletes. I've been particularly pleased with how positive our athletes are responding to one another and how that has laid the foundation to really make a run at earning a 9th straight bid to the NCAA Championships to be held in Sacramento this year.

It's all hands on deck from here on out...

First Day in the Books

Awesome first day! Completed our fitness evaluation and saw that the majority of athletes prepared themselves well for the rigors of training but also saw areas that we can have continued improvement. There were white cap conditions so we were able to use our BRAND NEW DOCK to launch two eights and have 5 athletes do a combination of erging and running. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality on the first day and a huge compliment to our coxswains who ran an efficient and competitive practice in tough conditions. Hands in felt pretty strong too...along with some extra little wrinkles that we've added to practice.

Recruit visits are heating up - we'll have four in the next four days or so and the classes they'll see are already looking fascinating.

Ready to Launch

A quick message for the 2010-2011 edition of Trinity Women's Rowing - starting it up on Tuesday.

Four Days and Counting

Until freshmen arrive on campus I mean...It's that awesome time of year again when coaches get to finalize race entries for fall head race competitions and make sure that our athletes are compliant with both our medical training staff and the NCAA.

Recruits and athletes please don't be surprised by the amount of paperwork you need to complete in order to be an intercollegiate varsity athlete. This list is by no means exhaustive but you need to complete the following items:

1. Medical history questionnaire
2. Cardiac screening with Dr. Carl Nissen who works with Trinity athletes (www.elitesportsmedecine.com)
3. Trinity Health Center physical completed
4. imPact concussion testing for all varsity athletes
5. NCAA waiver, compliance, and drug-testing forms
6. Regattacentral waiver (Head of the Housatonic, Head of the Schuykill)
7. Ronin Racing waiver (Head of the Riverfront, Head of the Charles)
8. Trinity Women's Rowing information card

Surprising isn't it? And when you consider that it can be a challenge to have 45+ athletes cooperate there is always somebody who needs to be chased down to do it. The consequences are large as you are not eligible to practice if you don't complete these requirements. First and foremost, we want you to have a safe and healthy experience participating and competing in Trinity Athletics.

Summer Recap

Have been purposely not blogging so that I can attempt to be more consistent throughout the season and give our alumnae, friends, families, athletes, and recruits some more to think about it, look at, and read about our team. This has been a turbulent summer for me personally in both good and bad ways and it's good to know that the mission and goal of our team is one of the rocks to which I can always return. As a quick summary I coached a series of camps that helped me redefine some of the parts of the rowing stroke that are critical and challenged the way that I approached the teaching process. I got to spend a wonderful week in Prince Edward Island with my family and reconnected to my first cousins that I haven't seen in years - it's easy to say it when we're together as a team but family truly does come first. I moved into a new house in West Hartford and have spent a good portion of the summer getting to know the place, fixing things up, and truly making it my own. I am really looking forward to having the squad here for breakfast (after a run from campus of course).
The other major highlight has been reconnecting with the erg and enjoying being athletic again. The group I rowed with in 2009 at the Henley Royal Regatta in the Thames Cup is aiming for a return in 2011 with higher expectations for training and racing. That has provided all the incentive I need to put training as one of the priorities in my life again and I'm truly loving the process. However, the work has been being done behind the scenes for much of the summer to be ready for this year's campaign and I am so eager to push, pry, pull, teach, cajole, support, challenge, correct, praise, criticize, explain, observe, analyze, synthesize, and most of all -  COACH the Trinity women for 2010-2011.

Individual Awards

It's really odd to recognize individuals within a rowing shell - team results are what really matters but nevertheless Trinity earned a fair share of recognition for performance in the classroom and on the water this year. Here is a quick list:

NESCAC All-Sportsmanship Team: Stephanie Apstein '10 (Captain)
NESCAC All-Academic Team: Jamie Callahan '11, Brianna Dix '11, Sarah Keller '11, Hannah Smith '10, and Tracey Suter '11
NESCAC All-Conference First Team: Deede Dixon '10, Robin Neschke '13, Sarah Keller '11
NESCAC All-Conference Second Team: Ellie Wierzbowski '10 (Captain), Courteney Coyne '10


National Invitational Rowing Championships Stewards All-Academic Team: Jamie Callahan '11, Sarah Keller '11, Kate Pool '11, Tracey Suter '11, Sophie Hollingsworth '12, Hannah Smith '10

CRCA All-Academic Awards: Sarah Keller '11, Kate Pool '12, Hannah Smith '10, Tracey Suter '11
CRCA First Team All-American: Deede Dixon '10

Season Complete - Boats back on the rack

My updates from the NCAA were clearly not up to par as we were continuing to try and make improvements all the way up to the warm up for the grand and petite final. It was one heck of season for its myriad challenges, successes, failures, and learning opportunities and it certainly taught me a ton as a coach. This year's varsity squad had 4 freshman, 3 sophomores, 6 juniors, and 5 seniors and they all made huge strides as we changed the guard so-to-speak.

To recap, there were seven teams invited to compete for the NCAA team championship: Bates, Trinity, Williams, and Wellesley from New England; Ithaca and St. Lawrence from the New York region, and the University of Puget Sound from the Pacific region. William Smith and Mary Washington were the two at-large varsity eights invited to compete. Given our results during the season and our progress post-ECACs the goal on Friday was to make the Grand Final with the 1V and the Petite Final with the 2V. After racing in the morning heats where only the heat winner advanced directly to the final both boats were faced with the prospect of racing through the qualifiers in the afternoon. The 2V sat 5th for the majority of the petite qualifier while the 1V was passed for qualifying at the 1500m mark. Both crews roared back with really inspired technical rowing in the 2nd 1000m and were able to secure positions in both the grand and petite finals making it likely that we could earn a 4th place NCAA team trophy. Looking back at the New Englands where the 1V was 6th in the grand final and the 2V 5th it was really exciting to see Friday's racing when I really saw the grit and determination of our squad come out. Split times for the 2V race can be found here and for the 1V race here.

Saturday we raced after the 1V semifinals and the 2V spent themselves early in an attempt to gain valuable team points and rowed a courageous race eventually finishing 6th - three hard races in two days took its toll and that's something we can address for next season. The 1V, a very young crew found the early going of the grand final pretty hot and sat in 5th place going through the 1000m and made a huge mid-course to move up to 4th position. By finishing 4th in the grand final it tied us with Ithaca for the 3rd place team trophy - the tie was broken by the higher finish of our varsity boat thus earning the squad a 3rd place NCAA trophy and 6th team trophy in a row.

More to come on individual awards, our new captain, and summer plans.