Photo Courtesy of Don Plath


Goes Trophy Race Report

Conditions: Slight tail wind between 3 and 5 mph. It was directly SE for the V8 and turned slightly to the S (quartering tail) for the rest of them. In other words, pretty perfect racing conditions and we don’t get those very often on Onondaga!

You can find results, boatings, photos, and interviews HERE.

Varsity Eight: We were a seat or two down in the first 15 strokes but managed to get even again on the shift to race pace. The first 1000m was within a seat or two across all three crews as each crew executed a move of some sort and pushed out to a couple of seats at one point. Navy was rowing 1 or 1 ½ strokes higher than both Cornell and us. I thought our executing in the first 1000m was absolutely perfect. We had a very effective start and shifted to a very effective rhythm. We try to go “internal” in the first 1000m and try to row an effective efficient rhythm. The guys did that. Navy had a couple of seats at the 1000m mark and took a push that gave them 4 seats. We tried a couple of times in the 3rd 500m to get back on pace with Navy but couldn’t match their boat speed. Cornell took a push somewhere in the 3rd 500m and was able to get close to Navy but the midshipmen fended off all our challenges. When we hit the boathouse docks (600m to go) you could tell that we were fighting hard to hang on to the pace but didn’t have the juice left to make a push at them in the last 500m. The final margin was Navy ahead of Cornell by 1.9 seconds and us another 1.8 seconds behind Cornell.

We had a good race, executed well and left it all on the water. We got beat on Saturday by better crews. We made some nice improvements from our Princeton Scrimmage and will continue to try to find more speed this next weekend with BU and Columbia.

2nd Varsity Eight: After watching our first 30 strokes of this one I will admit that I was worried we were in trouble. The guys were a little too excited off the line and came off with a higher than normal stroke rate. This caused us to spin our wheels a bit and we were a ½ length down by the shift to pace. Cornell and Navy got into an early fight for the lead and they had pushed it out to a full length by 500m. We had a decent shift to pace despite our start and were rowing a very effective base rhythm. The guys didn’t panic and did a nice job of sticking with the race plan. Navy started to drop off of Cornell’s pace at the 1000m mark and we were perfectly positioned to take advantage of it. We were even with them at the Long Branch Bridge and this seemed to give us a nice adrenalin push as we were starting to move on Cornell as well. The rating naturally started to come up with about 600m to go as the crowd at the docks started to make some noise and we really started to go after Cornell. We ended up .7 seconds short of them at the finish with Navy in third.

This crew continues to show me they want to fight through the middle of the race course. We have some things to clean up off the line but we are doing some good things here. Fixing the first 300m of the race is very doable over the next few weeks.
Frosh Racing: The first and second frosh races were great reminders for me of the learning process that goes on with these young guys. The freshman year is about learning what it takes to compete at this level and the Goes Trophy always provides that opportunity. Last week at Princeton our frosh did a good job of executing and sticking with it down the race course. This week they looked like they were tentative off the line, got behind early and things snowballed on them. I know that the guys were not happy with these margins and that Coach Bagnall and the guys will be addressing these issues rather emphatically during the coming week. I think these guys have plenty of speed left in them and that Coach and crew are going to figure out how to demonstrate this on the race course.

Next Up: This weekend we are off to Boston to race BU and Columbia. The racing takes place in the “Basin” and the finish line is about 300m toward MIT from the BU boathouse. There is no parking at the BU boathouse so fans need to rely on street parking in the neighborhood along the race course. As soon as I get confirmation of the racing schedule I will pass it along. We can all count on an early morning start though.