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Sunday, March 30, 2014

Coach's Comments on Princeton-Georgetown Scrimmage

Syracuse men's rowing head coach Dave Reischman has distributed his post-race report. Here are excerpts:


This is the sixth time we have started off our season with this scrimmage and I always feel like it is way too early to be racing. But I always come away reminded of its value for us. When Greg Hughes (Princeton Head Coach), Tony Johnson (Georgetown Head Coach), and I started talking about this race we felt just racing a 2K for your opening race and then loading the trailer and going home was not enough. The morning session was a 2K followed by a 1K, and in the afternoon session, we did four 750m races. In all the various races you could see crews from all three schools trying various tactics or points of emphasis—some successful and some not. My thanks to Greg and Tony for their adaptability and willingness to make this format work for the good of all.

You can find the USRowing Pre-Season National Poll HERE

You can find a recap with lineups on the Cuse.com site HERE

Varsity Eight:  We had two goals coming in to this race:  (1) Establish a strong rhythm on the shift down from our starting sequence, (2) Be stubborn in the middle 1500m of the race.  Like a lot of crews in this early season racing the first time we rowed our “race line-up” was in the paddle the night before. I thought we accomplished both of our goals.  Nobody likes to lose a boat race but the guys fought and didn’t back down when Princeton got out to an early lead.  I will take that this time of year. I thought we did a nice job of hanging tough with Princeton through the middle. Of the six-second margin, they managed about 4 seconds of it in the first and last 300m. The guys felt good about effort and we identified a few areas to work on during the next few weeks.

2nd Varsity Eight:  This crew had a rough go in the 2K racing and this is the very reason I like this format. There were some young guys in this crew with not a lot of collegiate racing experience, and the excitement of being side by side with another crew resulted in a very frantic/scrambled rhythm. Coach Cottingham sat them down in the break between the two sessions, got them refocused, and they were a different crew in the afternoon session. 

Third and Fourth Varsity Eights:  Both of these crews are coached by Coach Stangel and they both had really good races in the 2K.  Both crews had aggressive starts and were able to get out to about 3/4 of a length lead in the first 500m of the race.  From their they both did a good job of controlling their races and countering the various pushes by the Princeton Crews.  A lot of people in these two races experiencing their first collegiate racing and did a very nice job of wearing the Orange racing jersey for the first time.

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