Fun in Large Format

Took advantage of the media lab today to print out a truly enormous picture for our photo board in the hall today; the river shot you see above measures 41" tall by. . . something more then that. Trying to get some of our 'rowing art' up instead of the usual stuff. Not quite sure what I think yet, but I can tell you for sure it looks better in person then via iPhone.

Our trailer is famous. . .

We wish it luck out there.

Going to NCAAs!

What?

No, not the team. Not even me as a spectator, although it should be some excellent racing this year. Lewis & Clark will be represented, however, in the form of our shell trailer. Oregon State is going to both IRA (Sacramento) and NCAA (Camden, New Jersey) and needed a trailer to make the cross-country drive; we were happy to oblige.

My only request is a bumper sticker from Little America.

Got up to work yesterday and this guy was hanging out outside my office window. First time I'd ever seen him (her?). Very relaxed, hanging out on the vent in the sunshine amongst the flowers. It's a pretty good life.

Weekend Racing!

So our season may be done, but college and national team racing around the country is looking fast and furious and it's fun to watch.

Abby did it again-- partnered with Michelle Trannel she easily won the NSR #2 regatta by 9+ seconds and is looking like a solid favorite for a spot in the lightweight women's double going into the summer. Very awesome for a former Lewis & Clark novice, heck, very awesome for anyone!

I spent part of my sunday afternoon watching the action from PAC-10's; aside from the heater of a race for first in the men's varsity one of the best stories to me was the very impressive performance by Oregon State to pip Washington at the line for bronze in the women's 1v. Kate Maxim, a Lewis & Clark Law grad and former assistant coach here, is working with the OSU women and coached their novice boat to a bronze at the regatta as well. It's been fun staying in touch with Kate and watching the development of that program; well done and kudos to them for a great weekend of racing!

Abby Broughton is at it again. National Selection Regatta #2 is underway and once again Abby starts things off well; she's won the time trial and looks to be in a strong position for the rest of the races. I'll post again on Monday to update on how the weekend went.

Dénouement

This word and concept popped into my head this morning. Denoument is a concept I remember from my high school English days and I think it well reflects the last couple of weeks.

I spent yesterday cleaning out our launch dock and prepping our launches to come out for the summer. It's a big summer in the launch world. First two of our boats will be used for the Junior and then Masters Regionals regattas; big three-day races up at Vancouver Lake. As one of the Portland clubs we help support much of what goes on behind the scenes at these races. I'm headed up today to take up a launch and tomorrow to take up another and help set up the racecourse.

The next thing that will happen is the retirement of the Lowe, a 16+ year old aluminum hull that's been a faithful workhorse of our program but has reached the end of it's useful life (it leaks. A lot). In replacement we're getting our first wakeless launch. Given that there's some significant progress being made in turning the back channel behind Ross Island into a wakeless zone this is potentially a much more significant move then I first anticipated when we started talking about this a year ago. The sailing launch, an older Boston Whaler, will also be replaced with a flat-bottom Jon boat similar to the ones we now use. When all this is done we'll have four very usable, very reliable launches every day. I'm not sure what we'll do with ourselves without having to spend ten minutes pumping water out each morning.

Meanwhile work in the office has turned towards recruiting novices from the incoming freshman class and starting to identify expereinced prospects for matriculation in Fall of 2010. The nature of working at a college is that everything is seaonal. As one season ends we move on to the next.

The nice thing is that all of this takes up much less time then practice so I'm finding time to recharge my batteries as well; the bike has found the road again, and with nice weather forecast for this weekend I'm looking forward to some time on the back porch in the sunshine.

Rowing as Art

Remy Neymarc, a student here at L&C and a friend of one of the athletes on the team, came down a couple of days this spring to shoot some of our men's teams practices. We didn't think much of it until the photos got dropped off in my office today and are, simply put, tremendous. Check these out.

Hopefully I'll upload the rest to our Fliker page. Thanks to Remy for taking such amazing shots and sharing them with us! You can check out his website here.

Summing up is hard.

How do you distill a whole season into a blog post? I'm not sure you do. I've been putting off the writing of this post for a few days while I tried to figure out exactly what I thought about all of it, and of course I'm still not there in my own head. I also got a root canal this morning, so not all of my head is entirely here.

On the positive side. We had incredible team spirit this year, both on the men's side and the women's side. The Pack of Wolves, "Nice Lace, Radies", "orange & black, attack, attack", and so much more. I feel that the crew bought into the ownership of the team much more completely this year and that's something I hope they'll build on in the future.

We had our best races at the end of the year. This is something you can't always take for granted and often is harder to achieve then it might seem up front. At WIRA we had two crews on the podium, one win, and all boats involved in aggressive, tight racing in both heats and finals. A good way to end the year.

To work on? Squad sizes were small on both sides. In some ways this is fine. We don't need fifty or sixty or seventy people to make this team successful. But it does lend itself to risk; injuries become much more serious issues, and it limits our racing options.

Personally, I had a good deal of frustration at our results on the women's side. For the first time in my career I felt that the end results were not indicative of our starting potential. I'm taking a long look at the training we did, the technical process, and everything else to try to determine why this is so. I place no blame on this on the team; it's something I need to sort out for myself and I fully plan to come back next fall ready to build up and get back at it.

Overall I'm happy with the year. As I mentioned, the team spirit and enthusiasm at practice was excellent from day one on. If we keep anything going forward that's the one thing that will make the biggest difference.

I'll likely be posting less frequently from here out this month and less frequently then that in June & July; occasional updates may find themselves popping up but no need to check back daily. Thanks to all our readers and have a great summer!

In closing, what not to do, from our trailer drive north:

Here's the official athletic department write up about our weekend.

Last Practice

Going back in time to last week. At our final practice on the Willamette Dr. John Rudoff, a local masters rower and talented photographer, came out in the launch to take some pictures. We were doing a final race preparation workout with the women's eight against the men's fours. John took some awesome shots of the racing and I think captured a lot of the intensity and spirit of the season.

The full set is here. Big thanks to John for sharing!

And we're done

Back at home. The trailer pulled into Oaks Park about 12:45 today, we unhitched, and I came back here for lunch and relaxing. Back over there around 4:30 to unload everything and put it away for the summer.

I've got a lot to say about the racing, the trip, the experience of the season but not just yet. I'm a little travel weary and don't have much writing pizazz at the moment. Suffice to say that we had a successful trip with two crews placing (Women's Pair won, Men's Novice 4 2nd). We had great team spirit and I think achieved an excellent sendoff for our seniors. And I want to extend a huge thanks to the parents who put on a great show of support as well as hosted our team at a wonderful dinner picnic Saturday evening.

More tomorrow.