Pioneer LogLewis & Clark College’s Student-Run Newspaper

Crew successful in Salem

March 18, 2010

by Lindsey Bosse

Crew eased into its spring season this past weekend with a warm-up regatta against Willamette. The two teams hit the river last Saturday, doing race pieces against each other and separating into men’s and women’s divisions, as well as varsity and novice. The races were kept on rate caps, so that the teams could not row above a certain number of strokes per minute.  

The men consistently beat Willamette in all of their pieces. “We’re strong, but we’re not the powerhouses that are prevalent in other schools,” Daniel Saxton (’12) said. “Willamette was stronger than us, but we were able to beat them with technique.”

The races were kept between three and four minutes, with a rate cap in the mid-twenties. The men have a fairly light team, but still boast high endurance. Their technical skills also strengthen  Lewis & Clark rowers. Coming back from the regatta, the men look to work on improving their strokes per minute while maintaining their technique. Thus far in the season, both the men’s and women’s teams have worked heavily on their technique.

“Once you speed up, generally your technique begins to wane,” said Saxton.

The novice team on the men’s side, showed improvement since the beginning of the season. Last fall, the novice team competed in the WIRA competition and finished among the top teams. The WIRA regatta includes a lot of the western colleges, and is a huge meet. The novice team this spring season looks to follow in the successful footsteps of fall’s novice team.

“The coaching staff is really impressive,” Saxton said. “They’ve been able to make novice rowers really good really fast.”

The women’s team was opposed by a bigger, faster, more experienced group this last weekend. On the LC side, the team is fairly new, and still getting used to the water. However, the team still managed to keep up the competition. The varsity women’s boats struggled slightly, just from lack of experience. The novice boats, on the other hand, kept up with Willamette’s novice rowers.  
Coming back to training this week before spring break the team, both men and women and varsity and novice, will start working on starts and race rhythm.  

“It’s going to be exciting to take out the other teams with big guys,” said Saxton. “It’s going to be fun.”