Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Ergs come home to roost


After spending the summer at various homes and garages, our eleven ergs have started to return to roost. This winter we'll be above the cafeteria in a heated and conditioned space, instead of above the gym in the mechanical space. If you still have one, please bring it home!


Monday, October 22, 2018

A new project - Tempo Rubato

A relatively new Hudson "Great White" heavyweight single owned by the Hampton Roads Rowing Club (HRRC) named Tempo Rubato was damaged "beyond repair" - according to the manufacturer - and was given to us. The damage occurred when another boat was dropped on the single as it sat in the boathouse on a rack.


The boat has a huge break that will require me to basically rebuild a couple of feet of the hull and deck with carbon and Nomex core. The project is no more complicated as what I did three years ago with Wildcat where the two ends were actually separated from the hull. I hope to have Tempo Rubato usable by the spring. It would be suitable for rowers that weigh 180-220 pounds.


As of now, the bow is still attached by a couple of battens taped to the hull.




Once repaired (even if a pound or two heavier than the designed weight), this single will be a nice addition to our sculling fleet. A boat of this quality is worth over $5000!


Thursday, October 4, 2018

Oyster Reef Regatta


Charlie T. represented the school on October 7th in the Oyster Reef regatta, a head race sponsored by the EVSRA. He completed the three mile course in 27:51, a time better than two men's junior fours, all of the mixed eights, all of the women's junior fours, two of the women's junior eights and three of the men's junior eights! Results are below.


I'll be uploading videos of his start sequence and the finishing sprint soon. His next challenge is the Head of the Lafayette on the 21st.

Charlie was recognized as the BSCHS athlete of the week in this tweet (even though Lyndsey can't tell the difference between sailing and rowing!)

Congrats Charlie!

Monday, August 13, 2018

Learn-to-Row sessions scheduled


The next Learn-to-Row session will be Saturday September 29th at the Robinson Rowing Center at Lakewood Park in Norfolk. This session will only run from 10:00 - 11:30 (not noon as the previous sessions.) Directions to the park are on the right-hand sidebar. The sessions are designed to introduce students to the sport of rowing. You do not have to attend all of the sessions, but the more often you get exposed to the sport the more quickly you'll pick it up. We will have a tour of the boathouse, rig a couple of shells, and have a short on-the-water session. Participants should wear shorts, a tee shirt, and bring an extra pair of socks.

If you plan on attending, please e-mail coach Bousquet at bousquej@chsvb.org.

I hope to see you there!


Monday, May 14, 2018

Dare to Be - the movie

Bishop Sullivan Catholic High School will show Dare to Be
on Thursday May 31st at 7:30 p.m.
Mark you calendars for this unique event.
The showing will be at the Barry Robinson Theater and
Fine Arts Center at the school.
4552 Princess Anne Rd, VA Beach.


Dare to Be is a documentary film not only on the sport of rowing, but also the human spirit. It follows a series of rowers ranging from novice girls to women training for the Olympics, as they overcome obstacles and seek greatness. We learn along their journey that greatness can come in many forms and should not always be measured by traditional concepts of success, but rather by individual triumphs. It essentially suggests that athletes can define what success looks like to them – not coming in last place, beating a rival, medaling for the first time, qualifying for nationals, or winning an Olympic gold medal.

The running time is 91 minutes. 
To help offset the cost of bringing this film, donations will be accepted at the door.

Sunday, May 6, 2018

Independent Schools/Club Regatta

We participated in our final regatta of the season on a damp Sunday at the Botanical Garden. The morning started with torrential rain but by the time the racing started we had just a slight drizzle and light winds. Below is a short video of the MN8 start. The glassy conditions were the best we've had all season!


Below are the results. No wins, other than the WV4 crew's heat win, but a number of best times on this course. The Charlie squared double (soon to be re-named "Hypotenuse") bettered their time from last week's championship by over 13 seconds. Likewise, the WV4 crew rowed their fastest time of the season from the starting platform, bettering their best time in the EVSRA championships last week by over 10 seconds (and their 2017 gold medal winning time of 6:45.4 in last year's EVSRA Championship (albeit in the W2V4 event) by close to a full minute.)  

There were some interesting results from the guys' crews. Both the M2V4 crew in event 10 and the MN4 crew (who rowed exhibition) in event 17 bettered the times of the MV4 and MN4 crews in events 3 and 15 respectively.

The coxswain's race! Usually we tell rowers not to look at their blades, but maybe we should ask coxswains to watch theirs (three seat who shall remain nameless...)





Sunday, April 29, 2018

EVSRA Championships

The Championship regatta was held on Lake Whitehurst at the Norfolk Botanical Garden. Results are below.


Monday, April 23, 2018

EVSRA Spring Regatta II on the Chickahominy

Another early day. Sunrise pic again by Zack. This time the bus was on the HRBT span. One of the perks of early rising! The racing saw four second places. The two Charlies race the double for the first time. Below is their video.


And here is the video of the girls in the WV4 event:


and the vid of the W2V event:




Middle Mathews Regatta report

An early start and a long day. Our second win of the season. Our crews finished ahead of crews from Granby, Norfolk Collegiate, Gloucester, 1st Colonial, and Stone Bridge.

More to come. Cell phone sunrise pic by Zach. The bus was coming down the north side of the York River bridge.




Saturday, April 14, 2018

Spring Fling Regatta Report




We competed in our second regatta of the season on Lake Whitehurst at the Garden venue. It was a warm breezy day, with a SSW wind of 15-25 knots causing the referees to resort to floating starts (and not use the start platform.) A significant result was our MN8 crew winning their event, finishing first ahead of Williamsburg Boat Club, Norfolk Academy, Hickory and Cox High School. The pic above shows the guys checking it down after crossing ahead of WBC in second (out of the shot on the left) and NA in orange nipping Hickory for third. Cox High School is a distant 5th.  Well done, guys!

Their performance is significant because WBC, a composite program drawing from several high schools, was the dominate team, winning ten of the fifteen events they entered and most of the events the didn't win were taken by either First Colonial or Hickory, public school programs that started rowing in August.

The MN8 crew preparing to leave the launch dock
Their start sequence was captured from the ref launch by Sean's dad and is shown below. Pretty sloppy rowing for the first two or three strokes and settled down nicely. NA in orange shot out front pretty quickly (as did Hickory in green) but our guys reeled them in and finished first. The whole crew showed a relaxed controlled slide with good length. The rate is about 28 spm - a little high for this novice crew. It seems that most of the time, most of the crew is dropping in late. Jake's oar is loading up first.


The mast-mounted GoPro recorded the whole race. I especially like the enthusiasm at the finish!


Four other of our crews won ribbons in their events: the WV8 crew (below) who finished ahead of First Colonial, the WV4 crew who finished ahead of Princess Anne, the M2V4 crew who scrambled to make the start and still finished ahead of Norfolk Collegiate, and the MV4 crew who finished ahead of Cape Henry. 

The WV8 crew at finish
The WV8 crew at launch


More pics and some edited video to come. Results are below. Because of the shortened course length (floating starts) I have not included the absolute time of finish. The relative times from the first place crews are interesting, when comparing to the delta-ts from the first regatta:

Event  delta t Season Opener   delta Spring Fling
WV8               0:22.2                          0:33.6
MN8               0:59.5                         -0:10.6
WV4               0:19.9                          0:36.4 
M2V4             1:11.6                           0:44.7
W2V4             0:34.3                           1:13.9
MV4               0:34.7                           0:41.0

All of our crews in this regatta finished further behind the first place crew in the above events (delta t increased), except for the MN8 and the M2V4 crews which decreased the delta t from the first regatta. The M2V4 crew deserves both a scolding and some kudos. I had decided to have the stern four of the MN8 crew row up to the second varsity. These guys launched only 30 minutes after winning that event. Maybe they were basking in adulation or maybe they were just tired, but at first call for the M2V4 event their hull (Four Mile Run) was still strapped to the trailer! We had an all-hands evolution to get the boat rigged while the event had a second call. The guys launched at last call and had to almost race down the course to make their start. I'm sure they would have done much better had the boat been rigged and they could have had a relaxing paddle to the start. Lesson to be learned: all team members need to be aware of the schedule and each crew needs to be "ready to launch 40 minutes before the event time."

The M2V4 crew
Their start sequence is below. The NoCo crew in the adjacent lane caused some headaches, to be sure. 


We were hampered by a number of our varsity folks missing the regatta due to injury (Sean), family commitments (Sabrina, Rolando, Maddie) or school related functions (Noah, Mikaela, J.P., Eleni).  The two Charlies did not compete in a varsity sweep event, instead they focused on their still evolving sculling. I note they still have a ways to go to get competitive (90 seconds behind the winning times from M2X events in the season opener.)  

Charlie squared
The video below shows some of their rowing. It appears that the leg drive is not as strong as it should be and the recovery is a bit rushed. 


Our juniors and seniors may also have been preoccupied with thoughts of going to the prom (even though they did clean up nicely - see the pic taken by Mrs. Baker!) 

 

The WV4 crew at launch...




...and at the start
The W2V4 crew



The MN4A crew

The MN4B crew - preswim
The MV4 crew
Prom photo from Mrs. Baker


Saturday, April 7, 2018

Big 12 Double Dual regatta hosted by ODU



The forecast was severe enough to shorten the regatta (only the first 14 events were run) and to cancel the high school events that we were hoping to compete in.  None-the-less, Reilly and Aubrey had a chance to view high level rowing up close. They were on the start platform for events 2 through 10 and then were on the finish dock for events 11 and 12. When the front came through, we high-tailed it back home.

At the finish platform


Much of the rowing was live-streamed by ODU Sports and you can see the start of the WV/UT 2nd eights race at the 22:36 mark of the FB live stream linked below. Reilly and Aubrey are wearing the red life jackets and the school's wakeless launch is behind the start platform. There was a steady rain but the winds were light enough to result in good rowing conditions. The ebbing tide did cause the boats to drift to port (hence the sculling by the three seats.)  Texas dominated this race, finishing 35 seconds ahead of WV. It's interesting that the times show to the nearest thousandth of a second...

https://www.facebook.com/ODUsports/videos/10155421428965994/?comment_id=10155422357185994&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R9%22%7D



Saturday, March 24, 2018

Season Opener Regatta


We participated in the EVSRA's first regatta of the season on a cold Saturday at Botanical Garden. Even though we have had less than hoped for practice time on the water, we entered ten crews and everyone who attended managed at least one trip down the lake.


First up was our MV8 entry, but with injuries and absences we had novices sitting in the bow, two and three seats. The crew struggled off the line as evidenced with this vid from the start platform:


The crew finished less than three seconds behind Princess Anne (a school that has been rowing since August and had only varsity rowers in their boat.) Once we get the start sequence figured out and our novices in sync with the stroke, this crew has lots of potential. Thanks to Noah for coxing this thrown-together mix. Here's another video from the mast mounted GoPro:



Our second entry up was a Men's Novice Four crew who finished 2nd, beating the crew from Hickory and bettering the times of both Great Bridge and Cox High Schools in the other heat. It is notable that none of the other private schools that offer rowing as a spring-season only sport (NA, NCS or CH) even entered a crew in this event and that the crews from the large public high schools (Great Bridge, Cox, Hickory) started their novices in August. I see lots of potential in our MN4 crew as the season progresses.




Before the break in the schedule we launched the WV4 and the M2V4 crews. Both finished out of the money, probably due to lack of stamina leading to poor technique and the resulting check as the rowers rush the slide. The mast was mounted on Synchronicity for the WV4 race, but we forgot to turn on the camera!  






After the break we fielded out W2V4 entry. This crew again finished out of the money despite a solid start and a good first third of the race. Here are a couple of videos of that crew, again in Synchronicity -- the first showing the start and rowing with the leaders in the first 300 m. The second vid was taken later in the race where the check becomes prominent and the crew having dropped back.  




Our MV4 crew finished third in their event, ahead of our boathouse rivals, NoCo. The video shows the entire race, as seen from the mast mounted GoPro.




The MN4 crew filled the last four seats in our MN8 entry. This crew earned a ribbon for finishing ahead of Cox High School.



The video clips of that crew during the race are from Mr. Suhr in a following ref launch. The most obvious flaw is the poor timing. All eight oars must drop in at the same time. The stroke rower, by definition, sets the time and all others must follow. An early or late entry, relative to the stroke, causes set problems and a greater likelihood of catching a crab or of missing the water completely. We need to work on timing with our strong novices! The name on the Men's WinTech hull is  "σùν   χρονώ  νίκζ,"  which translates, "with timing, victory."









Four of our novice coxswains (Logan, Nina, Mia, and JoMarie) steered their first race on an unfamiliar body of water, guided to the finish with a strobe light marking the center of the course. The breeze was up and down most of the day creating some problems at the start and requiring delicate steering. Kudos to Nina who deftly steered pass a NA crew who rowed right through the middle of the WV8 race course. She stopped the boat safely until the NA obstruction was cleared, then restarted her crew who still managed to beat Princess Anne's WV8 crew (another large public high school who has been rowing since August.) The following ref placed our boat third ahead of Maury due to the obstruction. Truth be told, we finished only 13 seconds behind second place Granby, even after stopping, so our actual finish could have be 2nd. This crew is eager to race again on fair terms, especially after we manage to rein in the check on the recovery (no, footboards are not supposed to be yanked off the stretchers!)















The final results are below. Red indicates 2nd, Yellow indicates 3rd, and Green indicates also-rans. Blue will indicate a 1st place finish, something we WILL achieve in the next race.