Newsletter: Fall 2007

It was an extremely productive fall for both the men's and women's crews.  Both teams worked hard and raced aggressively this fall.  Both squads are young and eager for success, and seem to understand that the success they seek will only come with hard work.  This fall, they both laid the foundations for a successful spring of racing.

The women took the fall in a low-key manner.  They are very young, and Coach Jason Steele spent a lot of time teaching, and rowing his crew at low ratings so that the athletes could develop their technique and aerobic base.  Many of the women also rowed extra workouts in small boats.   The novice squad is a particularly strong group, and proved it with a medal at The Textile River Regatta.  I would not be surprised to see several of the novice athletes play an important role on the women's team this spring.  For more information on the women's team fall, see the "Women's Crew" section.

The men's team is among the best group of athletes that I have coached.  We have fourteen oarsmen returning from last year's Varsity and 2V eights.  On top of this, there are several strong freshmen, as well as athletes from last year's novice and 3V boats, who have made it obvious that they want a seat in one of the top two boats this spring.  The result of this competition was an intense and productive fall of rowing.

We opened the fall season with a win at the Textile River Regatta in both the Open Eight and the Open Four events.  The nearest crew in the Open Eight was a minute behind.  It was an excellent performance.  Unfortunately, we spent much of the rest of the fall trying to recapture the magic of the Textile race.  The six man in that race, Neil Lettenberger, is a graduate student and this made him ineligible to race in the Collegiate Eight event at the Head of the Charles.  The Collegiate Eight is the premier Charles event for small college crews, and therefore the race that the V8 was entered in.  It took a while to find Neil's replacement.  There were several powerful candidates, but all of them were sophomores with only one year of racing experience.  They were still learning how to make a boat go fast.

A lot of good did come from our predicament, however.  Neil stroked the 2V through the Charles and the young athletes behind him really benefited from his experience and ability.  Sophomore Jeff Onderdonk, who ended up rowing the Charles in the V8, also learned a great deal.  His individual technique and boat sense improved dramatically during the month that he spent in the boat.  The result was two strong performances at The Head of the Charles.  The Varsity was 12^th of 44 in the Collegiate Eight, and the 2V was 12^th of 70 in the Club Eight.  Both boats earned automatic entries for next year. 

We ended the year with a resounding thumping of UMass on the lake.  We rowed four four minute pieces and won each one by an increasing margin.  The V8 finally found the rhythm and power that had made them so fast at The Textile.

We rowed until just before Thanksgiving and then the rowers began captain's practices.  Before sending them off to train on their own, we tried to impress on them the importance of the next few months.  New Assistant Coach Pat Guelakis and returning assistant coach Bryan Pursell, were instrumental in this process.  Pat and Bryan spent the last few weeks of the fall teaching, urging, and threatening the athletes as they trained on the erg and weights.  The result was very encouraging.  All reports are that most of them are continuing to train.  If they do so throughout the winter, it should be a really fun spring.

Hope to see you at the races.

Larry Noble