On Sunday, Jaime's Lightweight Womens' Four boat from the University of Victoria (UVIC) just missed defending their crown from last year, coming in second in the Lightweight Womens' Fours to their perennial rival, the Undine Barge Club.
Saturday, Kelly, (on the right in the photo) rowing for the University of Louisville, in the Women's Club Fours, also earned a second place, but was still the fastest collegiate boat, as the winnng crew from Conneticut had all graduated.When I talked to Kelly after her race on Saturday, she was ecstatic. "It was awesome," she gushed. The thrill for her came part-way through, when the University of Ottawa boat right behind them made up a 10 second deficit to pull nearly even with them.
But rather than give up, the Louisville girls dug down and pulled away from their rival, finally ending up five seconds ahead of them at the finish. It was a convincing display and left Kelly giddy with delight.
Unfortunately for Jaime, they didn't have any other boats pushing them in their race.
UVIC's coach, Ray Lonsdale, (in a news release on the UVIC website) said that the Undine boat (which should have started right behind UVIC) missed the start of the race and had to start at the back of the pack.
That turned out to be an advantage, because UVIC, at the front of the 16-boat race, pulled away from everyone and didn't have any other boats to push them and no one ahead to try and catch.
Jaime's boat ended up eight seconds behind Undine in the final results. The race was not without a bit of controversy, as Undine was briefly penalized 20 seconds for getting outside the course. That would have cost them the victory, but the penalty was apparently dropped after a protest, and the original result was restored.
The Head of the Charles regatta is a head race, a class of regattas that are usually about 5 km long, with the boats starting in 15-second intervals. Because UVIC and the Louisville boat were the champions from last year, they started first, and had to pace themselves without any visual cues from the other boats.
You can read a report about the Louisville boats on the Cardinal's womens' rowing homepage.
The fall rowing season is drawing to a close for both Jaime and Kelly.
In two weeks, Jaime and the rest of the UVIC team will be in St. Catherines, looking to defend their Canadian University Rowing Championship crown.
And Kelly wraps up her fall season next weekend with the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta in Philadelphia, Pa.
Technorati Tag: Proud Papa
2 comments:
Great post Dave. It was great to hear about their incredible results.
Darryl
Thanks Darryl -- It was a lot of fun to be able to follow things happening in Boston from here in Victoria. I only hope that next year some enterprising person will set up some webcams along the course...now that would be really cool!
Post a Comment