Desert Sprints 3/6/10

Hello all,
I know it's been a while since my last post, sorry about that!

This Saturday, March 6th, both the men's and women's teams will be competing in the Desert Sprints Regatta on Tempe Town Lake. This is our only home race of the season and we would really appreciate any support from friends and family! Racing starts bright and early at 7am with the first ASU race being the novice women's 4+ at 7:16. Both teams will actually be able to sleep in! Race schedule can be found in full on www.regattacentral.com and is as follows:
7:16am Women's Novice 4+ Heat- ASU is in lane 1.
9:00am Women's Novice 8+ Heat- ASU is in lane 4.
10:22am Women's Open 8+ Final- Coach Burkett and senior Kirstin MacLean will be competing for Tempe Town Lake.
11:02am Men's Open 4+ Final- ASU will be in lanes 1 and 3.
11:34am Women's Open 4+ Final- Again, Coach Burkett and Kirstin MacLean will be competing for TTLR.
11:58am Women's Novice 4+ Final- If ASU places top 3 in the 7:16am race, you will see them again here.
1:08pm Men's Open 8+ Final- ASU will be in lane 2.
2:20pm Women's Novice 8+ Final- If ASU places top 3 in the 9:00am race, you will see them again here.
4:22pm Mixed 8+ Final- ASU will be in lane 6. The top 4 men and top 4 women will be in this boat.

Hope to see you all there!

8th Annual Hot Head Regatta 10/10/09- The women's Side

I'm cheating on this blog post a little bit by copying an e-mail that will be sent out to the parents, written by Ben Norris, a member of the Arizona Collegiate Rowing Foundation. Without further ado, here it is!
The ASU women entered boats in a number of different events in the 2009 Hot Head Regatta on Tempe Town Lake. In the Women’s Open 8+, ASU’s boat included rowers Cristina Rayas, Molly Heil, Taylor Barker, Justine Cisneros, Erin Paul, Sarah Katz, Kirstin MacLean, Brittany Cimmarusti and coxswain Jennifer Harley. ASU finished second to a boat from Tempe Town Lake Rowing that incorporated several rowers who recently won a national masters championship (including ASU Women’s coach Emily Burkett); ASU finished in a time of 21:13. ASU won the Women’s Novice 8+ with a time of 23:12, but had the distinct advantage of being the only boat entered in the event; rowers in the boat were Whitney Bannerman, Amy Willits, Cheyenne Lopez, Sarah Katz, Alee Hefton, Justine Cisneros, Kaitlyn Krolak, Victoria Morrow, and coxswain Jennifer Harley. In the Women’s Open 4+ (for shells with four rowers and a coxswain), ASU finished in second place, with a time of 20:39. The rowers in the boat were Cristina Rayas, Erin Paul, Molly Heil and Brittany Cimmarusti with coxswain Kirstin MacLean. In ASU’s final event of the regatta, the Women’s Novice 4+, ASU again entered the only boat, which finished in a time of 24:54. The rowers were Whitney Bannerman, Amy Willits, Taylor Barker, Cheyenee Lopez, and coxswain Jennifer Harley. Note that a number of ASU women rowed in multiple events – a considerable feat, given how back-breakingly hard it is to race 5K in a rowing shell even once. Coach Burkett summed the performance of the ASU women up by stating: “I threw a lot at the girls for Hot Head, I wanted them to get multiple races under their belt for the only home race of the season. I am very pleased with how everyone performed, especially the true novices in their first race ever. Kudos to the varsity 4+ for a hard fought race as well, we came through the turn 3 boats across and the ASU boat held a tight course to pass the TTLR B entry which had two ASU alumnae.”


The Women's Open 4+. From L to R, Molly Heil, Cristina Rayas, Kirstin MacLean, Erin Paul and Brittany Cimmarusti

The Women's Novice 8+. From L to R, Jennifer Harley, Whitney Bannerman, Amy Willits, Cheyenne Lopez, Sarah Katz, Alee Hefton, Justine Cisneros, Kaitlyn Krolak and Victoria Morrow.

Never underestimate the power of spandex!

It's always the freshman who get excited! Two of ASU Crew's newest members, Sarah Katz and Cheyenne Lopez (both class of 2013, wow, that was hard to write!) model their new racing suits they received this morning at practice. Four more days to Hot Head!

Hot Head & Parents Weekend

Two big events are coming up for the men's and women's teams. Saturday, October 10th from 7am to roughly 130pm, come join both teams and coaches as they compete in the 8th annual Hot Head Regatta. This is one of only two local races the team 2009-2010 school year. Come support your current family members or friends! We are always happy to see new faces at regattas. We also plan on dedicating both varsity boats at the end of racing.
Our next event will be parents weekend on Saturday, October 17th. This corresponds with parents weekend on the ASU campus. Please join us at the Tempe Town Lake Marina from 11am-1pm to meet coaches, parents and current team members. Get a tour of the marina and see where your sons and daughters spend their pre dawn hours 5 days a week! There will be a short rowing demonstration by both teams followed by a talk from Matt Steinmann, the men's coach (I will unfortunately be racing in the Head of the Charles that weekend in Boston and will be unable to make it) and lunch. The Arizona Collegiate Rowing collection will have an assortment of ASU Crew gear available for purchase (t-shirts $10, hats $10, hat & t-shirt $15, polo shirt $20), so please be sure to bring money if you are interested (cash and check only please!).

Thanks everyone!

Week 3

Just this morning I realized we were almost at the end of our THIRD WEEK!!! So crazy to think about the fact that less than three weeks ago I was walking up to the boathouse early Monday morning with my fingers crossed hoping we would have enough people show up. Luckily we have a good group of kids (hopefully a core group will stick with it!) who are all showing a lot of promise and continue to arrive at the marina bleary eyed in the pitch black at 5am. I've been trying not to scare them too much with our serial killer/killer clown stories from last spring (kept it to one so far), but didn't do so well when one of our alumni, Jackie McNeely (pictured above), decided to hide in the boathouse last week and jump out at me. I can admit, I haven't screamed that loudly in a while!
Practice ends for the week tomorrow with a tradition I am trying to keep up, Friday Fun Day! Hopefully the athletes get a workout in while doing something other than rowing, erging and running. For the past two weeks we played ultimate frisbee, tomorrow will be volleyball. Should be interesting to see the hand eye coordination!
Please keep checking back with us for future updates!

Mange Tak

Here's a quick note from Karen Hewell reporting live from Denmark!

I raced today. In a boat! But I will not sing "I'm On A Boat"! But I did... really. I was in one.

I raced three times back to back, and barely had time to dry off from the enormous waves that kept slamming into the rigger frames and showering me with freezing cold water. I spent most of the day shivering, and since I had begun the day with a bad taste in my mouth - ah, hello homesickness! How I didn't miss you - I was sure that this would put me in an even more sour mood. Luckily, it did the opposite. I need to make the effort to get out of my apartment even when I have no motivation. Laying around on the random double bed in our front room watching re-runs of House and eating frozen chocolate is a bad, BAD idea.

I thought it was funny when I found that there were even MORE differences between Danish rowing terminology and American rowing terminology. For example: We'll preface this with an explanation of the American saying. When a rower "catches a crab", it means that the oar gets caught under the water and is made especially difficult to get back up to the surface. Now, this saying is ODD - whatever - but it vaguely makes sense when you think of it in terms of, 'yes, crabs are water creatures. If a crab for whatever reason decided to latch onto your oar blade, it would probably create a somewhat similar response**. Yes? Yes.

In Denmark, people don't catch "crabs". No. They catch owls. SERIOUSLY. "Careful, you could catch an OWL. With your OAR." Do owls in Denmark frequently dive underwater? Do Danish owls have a fish fettish? Rather, how do people not laugh when someone says that?

Additionally, I was told that when I said our boat was 'walking' on another boat (this one means that you're gaining on another boat - i.e. you're 'walking through' a boat) it made it sound as if we were prancing down the lane, splashing water and singing. Frolicking? Maybe. Anyway, I need to entirely reassess my calls during races here. Don't want to conjure up any more images of us with bonnets and pink baskets, picking flowers. All in all, it was a good day. A great way to shake
off some of the crap that the week had muddled up in my brain. Tomorrow morning I'll be off to the gym with new fervency, seeing as I've had much too much fun this week, and it's beginning to show around my waistline.

**I told my friend Rebecca that we lost by a tenth of a second because we had caught a "baby crap" during the last 100 meters of our race. Later on, she told me she was so sad that we had lost because, and I quote, "a creature had somehow
gotten caught on our oars". My life is complete now.

Keep a lookout for a champion...

For those attending our practices, and in case you don't know already, we are in the presence of a 2009 USRowing Masters National Champion. I'll give you a hint...it's one of our coaches, and it's not me.

Day 2...looking good so far

Just a couple hours ago, we finished our 2nd day of practice. I like seeing the varsity really showing enthusiasm to the new rowers, and willingly helping out with their progress. We did a boat launch "demo", and it seemed to open some eyes to the novices, because they got to see a part of what we do up close. Its so easy to get wrapped up in getting them to learn how to row, and then they don't get to see what they're working towards. What made it better is that we got a little bit of everything in today! The varsity got a solid workout in to prepare for their first 5k erg test, and the novices got to see some video from last year. Then the novices got to put everything they saw earlier into practicing the technique on the ergs. Them being able to see what to look forward to definitely gave them a push to start improving their rowing. We're going to hit the water next week in the barge, and mix that with some workouts to get everyone the fitness needed for the season.

Altogether, we still need some more people, and hope that some people can open up their schedule to experience this great sport.

2nd day of fall 2009!

Just a quick note to say that the men and the women have both finished their 2nd day of practice for the fall 2009 season. The women (so far!) have 6 returning rowers and 8 newbies. While not quite the numbers we were hoping, the novices are showing great promise even after only two days and we also have two novices with experience which is HUGE for us! We hope to continue gaining people in the next couple of weeks as school schedules start to firm up. Our hope is to have a recruitment meeting sometime next week.

Keep checking this site for an updated from Karen Hewell ('11) who is spending the year abroad in Denmark and is rowing with a local team there. Check out her blog at www.redwreck.com for an interesting take on coxing in a foreign country!

That's all for now, thanks for checking in!

Pre-Season Post

So I guess this is my first entry in the ASU Rowing blog. Just want to say that I am so thankful for having returning rowers on the team that are so enthusiastic about making this team really develop into something special. I would talk about what I can provide for this team as the new mens coach, but if you've read my bio, you would tune out about now.

What I can say is that I have not really been a part of an established, and nationally successful team that continues to succeed just by tradition. However, the past 2 rowing clubs I have been involved with really showed me a sense of what it takes to create a successful team from small roots. The high school club I joined in Atlanta only had about 30 something rowers total, and by the time I graduated, we had reached our capacity of 110 rowers, and actually started a waiting list. This was because we simply did not have the facility or other means to accomidate more. That waiting list is still used today, season after season. What I realized is that it took dedicated rowers, coaches, and parents to work together and build the structure of the team. It took a lot of time and sacrifice, but in the end, it made the team grow exponentially, and the team name is well known in the region.

At Jacksonville University, I was recruited to help build that team as well. The coach was seeking rowers that were genuinely passionate about the sport, and not just the athletes that have shown success. The passionate ones in this sport can quickly pick out others that are in it for the wrong reasons, and only do it for scholarship or they're forced into it for other reasons. I'm not saying all rowers under scholarship are like that, but some exist. Anyway, after some time there, those that were honest about growth and recruiting stuck around, and did the best they could to make a name for their school. With that kind of attitude, they did not necessarily make enormous achievements, but just the passion of the sport was shown to others. By the time I left in 2006, a little team of about 20-30 athletes got the attention of alumni and other supporters, and that same year, a state of the art rowing center was built to give the team the best facility possible. Those involved in the team building process can attest that the rowing center is an obvious result of their efforts and enthusiasm.

Here at ASU, I plan to contribute whatever I can to create a similar effect on those that get involved. Being involved in a building process of a rowing team for the 3rd time would be quite an honor and an experience of a lifetime.