National Champions, part four

This is the fourth installment of the first chapter of Mark of the Orange 2 - the history of SU Rowing from 1962 to today.

Before the race, cox Ozzie Street and Sibley had discussed the crew’s weak point – the third 500. All season this had been a bit of a problem, and the other crews that had raced successfully against SU had usually made their move there. Sibley and Street decided they had to break that pattern. For the finals, the plan was to start well, stay among the leaders, then pull all out the stops in the third 500 and break away.

The finals featured Penn, Cornell, Northeastern, SU, Brown, and California with the Orange in “lucky lane five” (where Henwood, Street, and Sibley had been a year before when they won the second of Drew Harrison’s three consecutive IRA frosh titles). It turned out to be a classic Syracuse IRA race – a bit of chop, good headwind and a tight pack with no clear favorite.

“Are you ready? Ready all. Row!” They were off.

The pack was pretty tight off the line. Then it settled into a dogfight. Henwood felt a lot of splashing at the start. Then the pace settled, the legs started pounding down, and while the boat wasn’t the smoothest it had been, it was moving. It felt stronger and more powerful somehow, definitely different than the feeling in the heats and reps in the two days before.

The good feeling in the boat wasn’t felt by SU fans on the shore. Listening to the race announcer, they heard the Orange in fifth place after five hundred meters. Out in lane five, the conditions were somewhat rougher than the more-protected inside lanes, and that may have helped the near shore crews open up an early lead. But Syracuse was under-stroking the field at a 33, waiting for conditions to improve.

Coming to the thousand meter mark, the Orangemen were right where they wanted to be, behind Penn, Cornell, and Brown all in the inshore lanes, but well within striking distance. Cal wasn’t handling the conditions as well and seemed to be faltering just a bit, while Northeastern’s hard effort the day before in the heat seemed to have taken a toll; NU fell off the pace in the second five hundred.

Ahead at the finish line, the crowd may well have groaned upon hearing Syracuse was in fourth at the midpoint, but Sanford wasn’t concerned. He was thinking “just keep a steady pace as the water gets better, up your stroke and you’re going to go faster and faster and so at the 1,000 meter mark we were in fourth place and then we just went through the rest of them in the last 1,000 just by swinging and rhythm and taking the stroke to a 34-35 as the water got better. And we were long as hell. We were the longest crew out there and into that headwind that paid off because then they just went by – just motored away.”

The Orange were determined to make this their strength; for weeks they’d been focusing on driving through the third 500, and the crew dug in. As the Orange entered the third five hundred, from the bow seat Henwood saw the engine room in the middle of the boat “moving a wall of water with each stroke”. With the powerful Purdy, Evancie, Shamlian and Townsley driving the boat into the headwind, they started to move away from Penn and Cornell. Halfway thru that 500, SU had broken clear of Penn and Cornell, leaving Northeastern, and Cal further back. The power kept coming, and with 500 to go it was SU in front of Brown by almost a length.

Syracuse had gone from well back in fourth to well out in the lead in just five hundred meters. The Orangemen had taken the worst part of their race, that dread third five hundred, when the legs are screaming and there’s so far to go and they had made it theirs.