And so it begins....

I always feel like the real start of our season begins with Mid Atlantic Erg Sprints at TC Williams High School.  We took 25 rowers!  A great turnout, including quite a few novices! Mids is always a tough competition since the cream of the crop come, but I think everyone had a great time.  Zack only did the Quad Slide event with his friends, he didn't feel like doing his individual age event and I don't blame him.  There slide took 3rd place right behind the Senior quad.  5638 meters vs. 5574 meters.  A difference of 64 meters!  Both did better than last year.  A good day! I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off, but that's okay.  None of the other coaches seemed even remotely interested in making sure kids got to the warm up area or to their races on time...so I did.  Maybe I should have let them fend for themselves, but that's not my nature, especially the novices.  It was a great day.

Mighty Junior Quad - Zack, Connor Grubbs, Josef Millner and Bart Creed

Buddies since freshman year!

In action!

Mid-Atlantic Erg Sprints

This past weekend the Crew team participated in Mid-Atlantic Erg Sprints.  We had a great time and we had a HUGE turnout.  Last year we had 8 kids participate and this year we had 28!!  It's one of the largest Erg events in the country.  It was a lot of fun and we did really well.  Zack did a 1500m race for his age group and then he did a Quad Slide race with his buddies.  During the 1500m piece he did his best split yet, but frankly our kids just can't keep up with some of the big ass kids that were there.  I also think he needs to work on eating more so that he's got enough fuel in his tank.

Coxing one of his friends

The Quad slide he rowed in came in 3rd out of 3, but again in an open weight division where the other boys were beasts.  But more exciting… we had 2 Quads a Junior quad (made up of all varsity juniors) and a Zack's Sophomore quad, when you looked at their meters rowed… the sophomores actually beat the juniors by 4 meters.  That's pretty exciting, to know that they were able to not only keep up with, but actually beat the older guys.

It was a long tiring day, but our kids put out a great effort and a couple of our girls actually medaled!  We have such a great group of kids!  I just love hanging out with them and watching them do well.

Mid Atlantic Erg Sprints

The Spring Season is getting ready to kick off!  Zack had his first experience with with Mid Atlantic Erg Sprints.  It's a huge rowing competition and I'm very proud of Zack for participating.  He was the only freshman who participated!  We talked about how it would be a great experience for him, no pressure,  just rowing in his own event.  He could go and check it out, see what it was like and then he'd know for future years.   When we got there we discovered that one of the Varsity guys was sick and they needed Zack to row in the Quad slide with the rest of the varsity guys.  You should have seen his face.  It was outwardly blank, but I could tell he was a little freaked out, but he stepped up like a champ and filled in.  He rowed first in his individual 1000M race and did great.  He rowed his guts out!    4:09.8 - He was 36/38, but his place wasn't what we were concerned about, it was the experience.  It think it was harder than he expected, but he was so awesome.  Then just a couple hours later, he rowed in the Quad slide with the other guys.  I think it was a lot harder than he expected, but he dug down, gritted it out and totally hung with the big boys!  I was so proud of him!  It was so amazing to see him in the role of athlete.  Working so hard and doing so great.  I'm so use to seeing him as my baby, or as the goofy, computer kid.  To see him working so hard and accomplishing so much, it just makes me so proud!  I can't wait for the Regatta season to start!  The event in pictures...

Getting ready to row 1000M

 

Coach Lea coxing him to the end

Survived his first event

Rowing in the Quad

The Quad rowing hard!

Survived another event

Bonding?

The whole gang!