NCAA Nationals: Day 1

Here's the WWU varsity 8 boat immediately post-heat. They won. See some hand grabbing, general happiness. They will race in the grand final on Sunday. Boat personnel, from photo left: little white shirted one is the coxwain, Liz, 8 seat, Stacie, 7 seat Julia, 6 seat, Jordan, 5 seat, Lindsay, 4 seat, Meta, 3 seat Rebecca (Rebe), 2 seat, Sammie and bow (sounds like as in take-a), Amelia. Seven seat is now asleep on the bed at parental hotel, 3:30 pm eastern time.

The race is on Mercer Lake, where the U.S. National Team practices. This was a little bit intimidating. Princeton too practices here. It is Rutgers University's race course. Probably not all simultaneously. Note: yellow boat is demo loned by Vespoli for use at nationals. Coach put team initials on boat side with plastic transfer letters. The four has a banana boat loaner too.

The boy scout camp ambiance of this place surprised me, here as we are in the Ivy League east. These are the national finals for Division I and III as well as II. Brown formidible, Yale feeble last in their heats. True, the sanicans were difficult to locate, behind a copse of trees rather than set directly beside the officiating stand at Lake Natoma, but we parked in a ratty patchy grass field as for concerts at the Gorge at George. The field is at least occasionally used (and signage declares it) as a cricket pitch. We walked down a dusty dirt track to the lake front set about with scrubby bushes and a pair of little league bleachers. Lake Natoma has a heck of a lot more paving. We walked through a little forest to get to the chained off team only area and waved to the team. Yesterday we hung out in the team area and saw the dual sets of two docks each, one set labeled "Launch", the other "Returns". So there are some slightly pinched ass touches, not to betray my expectations here.

Western, Nova and UCSD 8's were together in first Div II 8+ heat. All three boats got off to a clean start with Western ahead, then when Western dropped cadence for the long haul, Nova stayed at their start rate, about 38 strokes/minute, and was up to the bow ball of the WWU boat before they began to waiver, about half way (1000 meters) down the course. WWU stuck to their race plan - watching on the Jumbo Tron (huge screen) we could see that Nova's stroke was fast and a bit frazzled while Western was strong and steady. Still, this was unnerving to watch, though we were far happier parents than the parents of the Nova girls whose team started in front only to be walked through.

Nova's four started fast too, but WWU's four held to their race plan and moved ahead seat by seat so that they had passed Nova with something like 300 meters to go. The Four was ahead by a boat length when two seat in the Nova boat pulled something in her knee and doubled over - that boat limped to finish, stern pair rowing, bow seat sitting out since two seat could not row, and our boat stepped neatly down to a lower stroke rate to not unduly humiliate the other team (WWU and Nova the only two boats in that heat.)