"official start to spring"

Even though spring season officially starts in February, it never really feels like spring season until after spring break, when we're out on the Charles every morning and have races every weekend. This past weekend was our second race of the season - the first being against Washington College at the end of spring break.

Almost all of our races are on Saturdays, but this weekend our race was on Sunday so we got to have a Saturday practice! Saturday practices are some of the best - you get to sleep in, it's already light outside, and we live the dream at team brunch afterwards!  And then, of course, it’s off to the library to attack the homework - no naps for these ladies (well, um, that’s the plan at least).

Sunday was race day, and the bus left at a very nice (and late!) 7:30. We headed out to Worcester, where it was a typical cool day out on the Quinsig. Of course the water looked flat and beautiful when we first arrived, and then turned into a headwind (typical). All four of our boats raced for our first spring away race of the season. After racing, we met with the friends and family who had come out to support us and feed us with some of the most delicious regatta food ever! Yum.

Our boats finished pretty strong in all 4 of our races yesterday (V8, 3/6; 2V8 4/6; V4 4/5; N8 2/6) , but we’re looking forward to having two weeks to ramp it up and come back with a vengeance!  We’re really thankful for all of the support from our awesome family and friends (especially some super cute 4-legged super-fans), and we can’t to see you all in two weeks after some hard work on the Charles!


Carly Abarbanel '12 & Susan Laves '12

Back on the Charles

 After another great week on the Chestertown River in Maryland (see Bamy’s previous recap), it feels good to be home.  Despite missing my roommates (shout out to Bams, Coogs, and Shernaz), and catching up on every episode of Say Yes to the Dress between practices, having hardboiled eggs in the morning, wearing clean workout clothes, and  getting back into the swing of things at Wellesley is really nice.

                When we arrived back on campus late on Saturday night, all of us who lived in Beebe hung out while we did our laundry. We also tackled a banana that I had left in my trash over break. I was scared that there would be some bugs crawling, so Tex took over as my life coxswain (first year skit reference!) and walked me down the hall to the big trash can while Maggie West was on call for a bug emergency. Luckily, there wasn’t. Then in exchange for washing her hat with my load of laundry and using my cool stain remover, Paige Swiffered my room. Talk about teamwork!

Back to rowing… Our first practice back on the Charles was this morning and we were welcomed with temperatures in the mid-30s. Even in the dark, we efficiently rigged out boats and resettled into our daily rhythm. Once out on the water, it was great to see other crews getting ready for some spring racing! There is communal energy on the Charles that, from my (limited) rowing experience, I don’t know if you can find anywhere else. Even at 5am, people are out on the river, old and young, in singles and eights, doing the same sport and loving every minute of it.

Before we got out on the water, however, we split up into boats to talk about some short-term goals for the week. Each boat seems like they have some great intentions and I know that everyone is using these objectives to get ready for our race day on Sunday at WPI.

Unfortunately, tomorrow we have indoor practice because the weather is supposed to drop to dangerously low temperatures. It’s kind of a bummer after having 2-a-day practices in sunny 70-degree weather, but it really makes you appreciate the time you have out on the water. I know that we will capitalize on every minute when we are back on the Charles and get some serious speed going.

                Dream fast and go blue!

                Jessica “Miss Chestertown-Springbreak” Frey ’13 

C-Town 2012 Recap:)

March 25

Spring break came and went even faster than expected.

We spent our last few practices working on our tans, the starts dance, and squirt gun skills (oh, and rowing).

Thursday night was the annual performance of skits. The first-years and novices raised the bar for all future years with a thirty-minute play, including multiple musical numbers, hilarious commercials and several references to my quads. The small but proud sophomore class performed this year, and the juniors continued the Class of 2013 musical number tradition, this time with more enthusiasm than preparation and several pushups from Ali. The captains rounded out the night with a short skit portraying our coaches, which involved many references to the long afternoons of seat-racing now behind us.

On Friday night we were treated to the yearly telling of Austin’s cat story. It never gets old. Sister gifts were shared and everyone took some time to enjoy one of the favorite spring break traditions: reading appreciations.

Saturday morning brought pouring rain, cooler temperatures than we’d seen all week and wind. The 1V and 2V had solid races against the Washington College eights, despite having to completely re-approach the starting line after being blown around by the weather. Then our four and novice and eight hit the course hard, despite rowing unopposed.

After racing, we had a chance to interact with the Washington College rowers, trading shirts and posing for some photos. We were also treated to a delicious feast provided by the parents (thanks again!) and a visit from Taylor’s dogs. After a quick trip to the hotel to gather our belongings and take lightning-fast showers, and after our last hurrah in the greatest dining hall on earth, we settled into the bus to spend our last afternoon with our driver Franco as we journeyed back north.

Now we’re all back on campus, missing the dried cranberries and soft-serve machine of the Washington College dining hall, along with the constant singing of “Heart Vacancy.” Additionally, no one made my bed for me this morning. In better news, we can now safely say this spring break was completely absent of the Franco WOD, during which in past years we have continued doing pull-ups, squats, etc. until the bus has arrived.

We got a lot done last week and bonded even more as a team. We’re ready to head back to the Charles tomorrow morning and find another level of speed this week in anticipation of our first spring race in Worcester.

Jennifer "Bamy" Lamy '13 

Spring Break Update!

After settling in Chestertown, Maryland, Spring Break 2012 is living up to its expectations. With two-a-day rows we have been maximizing our time here at Washington College’s boathouse and in the warm summer-like weather. After a long winter hiatus and an intensely productive indoor training period, it feels fantastic to be back on the water and in boats.

Here in Chestertown, after a morning to get situated we started in on seat racing.  After three afternoons of racing totaling around 40 pieces, we’re all feeling the burn. Many rowers, including my roommate Paige and me, have taken ice baths. It was painful, but Becca’s dancing to “Call Me Maybe” was a great distraction. The novice coxswain Claire has also helped by walking on rowers’ backs. Despite the groans that seat racing inevitably involve, it’s great to begin getting used to tentative lineups as we move forward. We’ve also done some valuable technical work since the sun shines much brighter during the Maryland afternoon than on the Charles at 5 a.m.

Spring break is also known for being a great opportunity to get to know other teammates. In addition to the usual shenanigans around the hotel, this year was the debut of the “Miss Chestertown Spring Break” pageant. The audience saw silver metallic spandex, a howling wolf shirt, and tomato-patterned shorts in the beauty section, followed by a display of talents ranging from hair braiding to Irish dancing. The next day, we had the afternoon off from rowing. Many of us spent the afternoon in Annapolis shopping, eating ice cream, and walking off the lactic acid in our legs. This evening we tie-dyed T-shirts, and the final evening will be the performance of class skits.

Our time in Chestertown has been a fantastic way to get to know our teammates and to start turning the fitness we honed during winter training into boat speed. We have a few more days in Chestertown—enough time for more great work before our race on Saturday with Washington College. After the long bus ride back to Wellesley, we’ll be showing some crazy speed upon our return to the good ol’ Charles on Monday morning.   

- Maggie West ‘14

5 Days to the water...and boy have they earned it!

Here we are, at the start of week three.  It has been a great 2 weeks of indoor training, and we are looking forward to finishing this part of our season!  The team is looking fit, strong, and the energy is super positive and hungry.  Can't ask for more than that.


The launches are making their way, one by one, to the river this week.  We will load up boats, oars and gear on Thursday, and Saturday is our big trek to the river.  EVERYONE is very eager for that first swing!  


We will spend a few days at home on the river (hoping for moderate temps in the morning) before we make our trip south to C-Town.


So far...things are looking "real, real good"

ETA? COUNTDOWN?? WHATEVER:) IT'S HAPPENING SOON

Spring Season kicks off at 12 am on 2/20...That is right, midnight madness, Blue Crew style!


That means less than 6 whole days before we start...boy this has been a long winter.


Get ready for some team posts, really soon...in the meantime another minute has passed that means we are one minute closer to spring season starting!

Honored.

We are honored to honor one of our Alumnae coaches - Mayrene Earle!

Mayrene is this year's USRowing 2011 Ernestine Bayer Award Winner.  Formerly known as the Women of the Year Award, the Ernestine Bayer Award is given in recognition of outstanding contributions to women’s rowing and/or to an outstanding woman in rowing and is selected by the female members of USRowing Board of Directors.

"Known as the “Mother of Women’s Rowing,” Ernestine Bayer was a pioneer in the sport. She pushed to be allowed to row on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia and eventually was taught by her husband Ernie Bayer how to row. She established the first women’s rowing club, the Philadelphia Girl’s Rowing Club.

Bayer rowed and competed into her nineties. She died at the age of 97 in 2006.
She was the first woman named to the National Rowing Foundation's Hall of Fame, the first woman to receive the USRowing Medal and the first woman to win USRowing's John J. Carlin Award for service to the sport. She was also nominated for the Sullivan Award, given annually to the top U.S. amateur athlete.

Mayrene began coaching in1974 at Wellesley College where she coached varsity and novice women's crew in addition to women's basketball. She was also a physical education instructor. Following her time at Wellesley, Earle coached at Northeastern University fro 1979 to 1981 before moving to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1983 to 1998 where was both an assistant professor and head women’s coach.

Between 1998 and 2003, Earle worked in the Provincetown Public School system as a health and physical education teacher. During her time as a collegiate coach, Earle’s teams have reached the grand finals at the NCAA championships, were crowned conference champions four times and won four points trophies at the New 8 Regatta and reached the grand finals at the Collegiate Nationals.

Earle, 60, founded MastersCoaching in 2002 and began holding three and four day sweep rowing clinics for master rowers at venues around the world and has led her rowers to gold medals at masters world and national championships and to the podium at the Head of The Charles Regatta."

- USRowing.

It is an honor for us to honor Mayrene - and we hope to see her on campus again very soon!!

What are you thankful for?

Wellesley can feel like a bubble, and Blue Crew is an even tighter bubble within that. Ask any rower or coxswain – the library and KSC are probably where we spend most of our non-structured time…with each other. That’s a lot of time with the same people, not that we don’t love it! With our relentless training right off the bat from the end of fall season, it’s nice to leave campus, the erg loft, and even our friends and teammates behind for a while just so we can look at things with a fresh perspective when we come back. 

Thanksgiving break started off with a 2K and 30’ mileage test. What better way to make us more grateful for a few days off? Although many of us were coming off a difficult week academically, several people pulled PRs. Impressive. After that exertion it would’ve been easy to take a few days off over break and just carbo-load on the couch. Despite the temptation, we saw quite a few Turkey Trots, 5Ks, and WODs (such as the “Gobble Gobble”) being updated on our team site:)

Susan Laves, Rachel Coogan and I headed down to Philadelphia for our first-ever (but definitely not our last) half and full marathons, respectively. We all finished! I think I speak for all of us when I say that I’m thankful to be on such a supportive and genuinely caring team. Coogs, amazingly, qualified for Boston with a time of 3:19.  “If only we had TRAINED! We’d be superfast!” she kept saying as we hobbled back to the car. Never enough, as coxswain Emma Kaufman likes to say. Becca Kimball, currently studying abroad in Spain, also recently ran her first half-marathon. Hmm…could Blue Crew’s training plan be the next magic formula fad in marathon training?

With finals coming up, the next few weeks will take extra focus and efficiency to get through. The sophomore class has proposed a “little competition” to keep us motivated …  winners will win a cake, baked using their secret family recipe (?!). Nothing like some friendly competition to get us in the holiday spirit!

Valerie Soon '13

You have to force yourself...

Rowers are big on quotes. I don’t know if this applies to all sports, but on all the rowing teams I’ve been on, quotes are a big source of inspiration, motivation and re-dedication. Especially during the tough winter training months, quotes play a pivotal role for the rower. One of my favorites is from Tiff Wood, US Olympic and National Team rower as quoted in The Amateurs (one of the best rowing books of all time):

"You have to force yourself to stay with rowing. If you put the first of your contact lenses in your eye, that is almost a sure guarantee that you won't go back to sleep. If you can get up and past the bed, then you will reach the kitchen. If you can reach the kitchen you can reach the front door. If you reach the front door, you will reach the car, and if you reach the car, you can reach the boathouse. Each step leads to the next one. You keep pushing yourself so that you will not quit."

For most of us on campus, it goes more like: if you make it to the bathroom, then you put your spandex. If you get your clothes on and make it outside your dorm room, then you can definitely make it to the KSC. If you can reach the sports center, then you can make it up to the erg loft, and if you can sit down on that erg and start warming up, then you’ll finish the workout for the day.

Of course, it helps to have friends, so one of our big goals for the winter is to get as many of us working out together as possible. This past week we brought back the Wednesday full-team circuits of Winter ‘09, and we rocked out to some great tunes while getting the work done.

While a lot of winter training workouts are erg-based, things like circuits, running and spinning are fun ways to spice up our training plan. In fact, earlier this morning, many of our teammates ran the Chilly Half Marathon in Newton, Mass. And Miss Rachel Coogan soared past her competitors to finish with the THIRD fastest women’s time! Way to go, Coogs!!! Congratulations to everyone who completed the 13.1 miles; we are so proud of you all!  

Clearly Blue Crew is a force to be reckoned with both on and off the water.

Shernaz Dossabhoy ’12

The Great Re-cap!

Fall season ended with Blue Crew’s championship sweep of the 7 Sister’s Regatta last Saturday, October 29^th.  We are incredibly proud of all of our rowers, as this is the third year in a row that Wellesley has taken the 7 Sisters plate back home with us! 

We can’t believe the season went by so fast!  But we definitely packed a whole lot of good work into it.  As our previous blog posts describe, we had across the board strong finishes at the Snake Regatta (the first of the season) with our 1^st Varsity Boat taking second place.  Next, our 2 entries at Head of the Charles left tons of crews in their wake, and finally we sprinted to the finish line of our season with a 7 Sisters sweep! 

Watching our first varsity boat pass every single other boat, walking through 2 boats in the last minutes of the race was phenomenal!  I was just sitting there in bow seat of my boat, getting ready to dock, you know, taking the occasional stroke so our coxswain could get pointed, and I could not believe my eyes as the blur of blue just kept steadily walking on through the other crews.  If it had been possible to jump up and down in a boat, we would have been one unset boat!  But instead we just kept our screams going as we watched our powerful 1V fly across the finish line!  So. Awesome.  Nice rowing, Ladies!

So, here we are, end of the season.  Time to relax, spend time with friends, maybe go into Boston, maybe not be so sore all the time… oh, wait, what’s that?  A winter training plan that starts just as strong as we ended last week?  Yup, that’s what that is…

Well, our team worked together, cheered each other on, and helped each other out as we started our first, oh-so-fun, week of indoor training.  For now, we’re keeping our eye on the prize and staying focused on our goals.  But, oh man, we wish we were still on that dirty water….

And we know the Charles probably misses us to, so we decided to write it a little note:

Dear Charles River,

We miss you already.  Have fun freezing over soon, and get ready for some of the fastest Wellesley boats ever come spring season.

See you in March 2012.

So much Love,

Blue Crew

Carly Abarbanel '12

HOCR Recap:)

Hey all, sorry for the late update but here's the news on HOCR. 


Last week we split the 2V into a racing four for Saturday and merged the other four rowers with the 3V.  It was a hard week for everyone because the Ames does NOT like to be apart.  In the LKV they too were training hard all week for the collegiate event on Sunday and Blue Crew's other crews were sticking it out knowing that their next race was not for a full week after.  
The results from Saturday were not as good as expected for the 4+ but as always, we are treating it as a learning experience and are ready to take bigger risks with the Ames as an eight this weekend.  Saturday night was the HOCR dinner with friends and family, which the event committee planned so nicely (pasta, salad, cake, CIDER... what more could you ask for?). 
Sunday was a big day for the LKV as they were in a much higher starting position than last year.  After taking 4th again it was agreed that the race was solid but that there was still a lot of work to be done.  Congrats to Ali P, Coogs, and Jess (and your's truly) on our first HOCR as competitors! Get ready to see some fast novices (and other Blue Crew boats) at Seven Sisters.


Aidan Chambers '13

Let the RACING begin!

This past week started off with the rare afternoon practice on the Charles on our day off from classes.  Although several of us fretted through the long weekend, wondering what the "doozie" (as described by Tessa) could be, Tuesday's practice was an exciting opportunity to test our speed on the Head of the Charles course.  Since we usually launch around 5:20am when sunrise is still hours away, it was strange being able to see my oarlock, the dock, the seven other rowers in front of me, etc.  

Saturday was the first official test of our speed at the Snake Regatta on good old Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester, the site of many of our springtime races.  With the choppy water and raging wind, it's hard to believe this year's conditions were better than last year's.  There was definitely a moment during our row up to the starting line that we stopped moving forward in the face of the wind.  However, all our practice in these conditions paid off so were able to tackle them on race day.

Each of the five 8+'s put in solid performances, including a 2nd place finish by the 1V and a GREAT first race from the novice squad, resulting in our best ever overall finish at the Snake Regatta.  For those of you interested in the times, results are available at at row2k.  Many thanks to all our family and friends who came to support us at the race and brought a delicious and healthy lunch.

As we head into the next week, there is a palpable energy always associated with the Head of the Charles.  Look out for the Blue racing in the Collegiate 4+ event on Saturday at 3:46 and the Collegiate 8+ on Sunday at 3:46.

Tess Ruderman '13

Well deserved break...

After a long week of midterms, seat racing, swing rows, more midterms,  and a “Playdate on the Charles” (and by playdate we mean two by Head of the Charles) Blue Crew parted ways to enjoy a much deserved fall break.  While some returned home, others ventured into the wilderness for two days of camping, a few studious individuals stayed on campus, and the coolest kids of all (aka the sophomores who didn’t have plans before Thursday) went apple picking.  While apple picking doesn’t have a lot to do with crew, we used it as an opportunity to debut our vertical jumps.   In addition to practicing for this key element of our testing regime, we picked delicious apples for a pie-- and by a pie, we mean three pies.

            The entire team is looking forward to our short and sweet fall racing season.   Our first race this Saturday will be the debut for our novices at the Snake Regatta, the following weekend is Head of the Charles, and finally on the 29^th the season culminates with Seven Sisters Championship.  We’ve been making progress in our ever changing lineups, and are looking forward to facing some other DIII programs in the next three weeks.

Becca Freeman-Slade '14