Women’s crew has carried the momentum from the fall season into the spring season, taking their progress and achievements in stride. Most recently, the Tritons competed at the Berg Cup Invitational, which was held March 26 at Newport Harbor. The varsity four-boat, which included senior Anne Roddy, junior Meghan Kelly, senior captain Sarah Smolley, junior Cara Kuebert and sophomore coxswain Allison Kamdara, placed second at the competition, beating several Division I schools and finishing only 10 seconds behind first-place winner Cal State Long Beach.
“We were the only Division II school there,” head coach Patti Pinkerton said. “The rest were Division I scholarship schools, so we’re really pleased.”
The varsity eight-boat, which was made up of Roddy, Kelley, Smolley, Kuebert, Leah Llach, senior Liz Record, junior Mel Kaelberer, junior Dannan Hodge and junior coxswain Arianna Pilram, finished fourth, trailing University of San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine. The second varsity eight-boat finished in fourth place as well.
Pinkerton was also satisfied with the team’s progress.
“We’re just starting speed work this week and working on more strokes per minute,” she said. “We’ve chosen to look at the big picture for training, while a lot of our competition is against people who do speed work first.”
The novice four came in second behind Orange Coast College, while the novice eight took third out of seven teams. The second novice eight finished second, trailing only to Cal State Long Beach while beating rivals USD and UC Irvine.
February brought the first race of the spring season. Competing against UC Irvine at Mission Bay, the varsity boat finished the 2000-meter race in a time of 7 minutes, 24.30 seconds against UC Irvine’s boat, which finished in a time of 7:13.70. The Tritons’ boat, which included Roddy, Kelly, Smolley, Llach, Hodge, Kuebert, senior Joyce Chang, junior Katie Morris and Pilram as coxswain, maintained 30 strokes per minute, compared to UC Irvine’s boat, which averaged 35 strokes per minute.
Pinkerton was impressed with the boat’s ability to maintain that rating.
“We will continue to raise the [strokes-per-minute] rating,” Pinkerton said. “But we will not approach 35 strokes per minute until late April.”
Kelly echoed her coach’s comments about this particular race, saying that the rating was determined by group training.
“We had been working at 30 strokes per minute that week,” Kelly said. “Our coach tells us the rating for the day, and we just stick with that. I think we could have managed 35 strokes per minute, but our technique would have suffered.”
Despite the varsity boat’s loss, the crew was optimistic.
“[It was] a really good race because when it started to fall apart in the middle, we were able to get it back together,” she said. “That’s a really good sign.”
In crew, if the tempo gets off track, the boat is thrown around. It takes concentration and determination from all members of the boat to regain fluidity and get back on track. During the race, the rowers pay attention to the stern pair (seat seven and stroke) to regain their momentum.
Roddy also saw this race as very promising for the upcoming season.
“Last year, we lost by much more and Irvine just beat us, hands down,” Roddy said. “This year, it was more of a race, and once we have the mental strength, we can easily improve physically.”
The team’s main focus this year is to dominate the third 500 meters, which requires the most mental strength. UCSD has had a weakness in that particular leg in previous seasons, but the team believes that this will be the year to change that.
“In the past, we haven’t been as competitive,” Roddy said. “Physically, we’re equal to, if not better than, most of our competitors. We just need to have people realize that and increase the team’s confidence. I’m really excited about how strong everyone is this year. Once everyone starts to believe it, we’ll be a mean team.”
The women’s second varsity boat finished with a time of 7:36.70, just six seconds behind UC Irvine’s team, and within 10 seconds of the first varsity boat, showing the depth of talent across this year’s team.
The lightweight rowers were also able to hit the water in their first race since last fall at the Head of the Charles in Boston, Mass. They finished with a time of 8:47.80, compared to UC Irvine’s time of 8:28.20.
The novice team took home two victories. The first boat finished in a time of 7:31.00, two boat lengths ahead of UC Irvine’s team. The second boat clocked in at 7:48.47, an impressive 44 seconds before UC Irvine’s novice team.
The novice team has its next competition on April 12 and April 13 at the San Diego Crew Classic at Mission Bay. The varsity boats will row on April 2 at the Northwest Collegiate Rowing Championships at Vancouver Lake, Wash.
