Some of you may have noticed boatings are different this week than usual. Don’t stress. As we come up to CSSRA boats will change. The best thing you as an athlete can do is get in whatever boat you’re assigned, and do everything you can to make that specific boat faster. That is done with good technique, solid effort, and being a good crewmate. Mike and I need you guys to come to practice with a positive attitude, good listening skills, and a willingness to work hard. We’ve got 9 practices left before CSSRA. Let’s make them the best 9 of the season.

I’m going to be chasing down a number of you to pay your entry fees for SNRC and Cities.

Remember that these have been paid by me and the school is not reimbursing. So we have to cover these ourselves.

I’ve been able to review and think about the weekend regatta and here are my thoughts. F

First and foremost, we have roughly two weeks until CSSRA and one week to the upcoming City Champs. These weeks will go by quickly and it is important that you take in as much information as the two coaches push at you.

Overall the weekend regatta was very positive. This was our first large regatta in over two years with two thirds of you never having experienced this. We performed well but not great. However, experience and focus will ensure the future regattas are great.

Crews raced well and we saw a number of crews make finals. This is a good thing. What was nice to see was the improvements made between heats and finals with some nice adjustments as crews leading to large improvements in time. One crew made simple adjustments in their stroke rate and improved 30 seconds.

I saw a number of races and Westdale crews for the most part were very successful in getting into the gates. The wind conditions conspired against the smaller crews and we’ll practice this skill set.

Some crews struggled with the racing and that is fine. It is what you do next. Honest and transparent communication is key but this is a difficult skillset. Many of the post race debriefs did not focus on the race between the gates and the finish. In the future the goal is to get faster and impartial debriefs are one of the steps to achieve this.

You also found that regattas can be long and tedious. This regatta either experiences two extremes in weather. Very hot or very chilly. We had the former and as you found you need to be in the shade and hydrating, Not all of us were successful at this.

At least part of one crew found that they were sitting around for almost the whole regatta before they even had a chance to race. This is the nature of regattas and the condensed nature of this one did not allow for more races. My apologies for this. It did not look as being such an onerous ordeal when I made the entries. I’ll do better in the future.

So we embark on the last two weeks of the spring season. I will reiterate your two primary goals when you are on the water. Perfect your rowing stroke. Every crew can improve in this area. We need to be more precise and efficient in all facets of the stroke. This is a movement that you will repeat over 200 times in a race. A single centimeter improvement in each stroke will mean 200 cm. That is the difference in many races between being in the medal and not.

The second goal is that you need to continue to work as crews. From the boathouse to the water and back the boathouse. Function as a single entity.

Good work all around and lets be better this weekend.