State Championships

 Pix needed from this regatta!  Send them to me and I'll include them in the near term.

For the first time in the history of the program, we sent crews to the State Rowing Championship Regatta in Occoquan. We couldn't make it out of the heats, BUT consider the following:

(1) No other school in the EVSRA even entered the W1stV8 event.
(2) Of the three EVSRA schools that entered the M1stV8 event, none made it out of the heats. All three (us, Cox, and Princess Anne) finished a distant fifth in their respective heats. We bettered PA's time by three seconds, and were but 4 seconds slower than Cox's.)
(3) All the other schools that entered eights in the EVSRA championships (e.g., Great Bridge, Norfolk Academy) opted to either break their boats into fours, row as qualified lightweight eights, or pull seniors and enter the junior eight event.

So,... lessons learned? It's obvious to me now, and possibly should have been before I registered, that rowing in the V8 events in Northern Virginia is a quantum leap from what we experience here in our region. Consider Georgetown Visitation Prep (who were placed in an adjacent lane in our WV8 heat  race.) This all-girl Catholic high school in downtown D.C. (with an enrollment of 450 girls)  only rows eights. They start their freshmen in eights (and compete in freshman eight events, none at the state championship regatta), then by sophomore year those same girls row in the junior eight event. In their junior year those same enter the second varsity eight event and finally as seniors row in the WV8 event. Our girls faced GVP and hung tough with them for the first part of the race only to fall behind and eventually finish 40 seconds off their pace. GVP finished 4th and qualified for the petite finals, we finished 5th and went home.

The schools that row out of Sandy Run also include trail running in their practices. I believe I heard from the boathouse area to the grandstands and back, twice, each practice.  Them be some conditioned athletes!

Below is the video of the M1stV8 heat race. I included the platform loading sequence for future coxswains.

The full results are available on Row2K at this link.

A word about the required progressions: At each level (M8, W8, M4, W4, etc.) schools must enter a 1st varsity boat before they are allowed to enter a 2nd varsity boat. Any junior entries must have all athletes in 11th grade or below, with no one 18 years old.  A school may enter a light event without a varsity entry, but all light athletes must be certified by the school's trainer at the start of the season (in February.)

With our seniors and with our available hulls we could enter the 1st V8 events, or we could have entered the 1st varsity 4 and 2nd varsity 4 events (assuming I could borrow 2 other competitive hulls for the 2nd V4 entries.)  For next year I'll seriously be looking at going the "four" route.