Results: 2013 Canadian Henley

By Rachel Pettis

There’s just no ending the summer without the highly anticipated Royal Canadian Henley Regatta. Across the board RBC had quite a successful week with multiple crews leaving St. Catharines wearing some pretty hardware. The conditions on Henley Island grew more and more favorable each day and by Sunday treated the crews to nearly flat water and sunny skies. To start off the week, the Master’s Men’s 8+ won gold as did Nik Kurmakov in the Master’s 1x. Both Men’s Masters 4+ finished 2nd overall.

Lauren Ayers took home gold in the Senior Women’s Lightweight 1x, arguably one of them most competitive events of the week. Finishing just ahead of Vesper after a mean sprint, Lauren’s victory was as exciting as it was deserved. Mike Farry placed second in the Senior Men’s Lightweight 1x in another extremely competitive final. Men’s and Women’s Sweeps also fared well against rival and Canadian clubs alike.

The Senior Men’s 8+ finished sixth overall and the Women’s 8+ Dash took home second. The Women’s Senior 2- finished third and in an extremely close race RBC took home third and fourth in the Women’s U23 2-. The Senior Women’s Lightweight 4- took home 4th overall but was the first American crew to cross the line. According to a spectator in the Port Dalhousie grandstand this particular race was one of the most exciting due to some questionable steering. After multiple crabs and collisions in the last 250 meters, several of the Canadian crews crossed the finish line in the entirely wrong lane. Riverside also competed in the Dash for Cash with a mixed 8 winning gold as well as some swanky Regatta Sports gear. Tired but satisfied RBC left Saint Catharines feeling like Olympians…well not exactly but Border Patrol seemed convinced enough.

Results: 2012 Textile River Regatta (TRR)

Open and Masters

M Veteran 1x: Paul Dale
M 2-: 1st: Keir Evans, Brad Sherman
M Master 8+: 1st and 4th
W Club 2x: 1st Beatrice Sims, Chelsea Wakeham
M Open 1x: 1st Jim McGaffigan, 2nd Sean Wolf, 3rd Evan Bailey
M Club 8+: 5th
W Club 8+: 3rd
M Master’s 4+: 1st
W Club 1x: 1st Kelley Woodacre
M Open 4+ 3rd, 4th
W Open 4+ 4th
M Master’s 2x 1st (John Saxelby, Ernest Cook) 6th (Ed Frankenberry, Shameek Sarkar)
M Open 8+ 6th
M Club 2x: 3rd, 4th

Juniors

M Jr 4x: 2nd
M Jr 8+: 16th, 55th
M Junior 4+: 3rd, 27th
W Jr 4x: 7th
W Jr 4+: 11th
W Jr 8+: 15th, 43r

2012 Fall Sweeps Update

The Women’s Sweeps
By: Severine Imbert de Smirnoff

The Women’s Sweep Team is excited to welcome 11 new rowers and 3 new coxswains this fall: Talia, Hannah, Allisaon, Beatrice, Molly, Meghan, Janie (not new), Shana, Carrie, Chelsea, Rachel, Carly, Grace and Mike.  They all bring great talent and enthusiasm to the team.  This fall they have already raced 2 out of 3 of the Head of the Kevins, Textile River Regatta, and the Green Mountain Head.  Looking ahead, be sure to cheer them on at The Head of the Charles in the Women’s Club 8+ and teh Women’s Championship 4+.

The Men’s Sweeps
ByL Jeff Forrester

The Men’s Sweep Team is experiencing a run on masters  for the fall season.  There enough to fill an 8+ and two Senior Master 4+’s for The Charles. The 8+ is expected to be competitive and move further up the rankings.  In the last few years we have placed in the Senior Master 4+ (50+’s), so we are looking for some hardware in that category as well as in the age 60+ boat.  For the young guns, we have a Club 4+ and Champ 4+ entries.  Both are positioned to place quite well, if not win.

The Juniors
By: Katy Ruderman

The juniors are excited to be starting their fourth season as Riverside Juniors!  We have 20 boys and 20 girls this fall.  We completed our first race (besides the world renowned Head of the Kevins) at the Textile  a couple Sundays ago; we raced eights, fours, quads, and doubles.  We have a very young group this fall and it seems that each week someone drops another minute off their 6K!

For the Head of the Charles we have a men’s and a women’s youth 4+ entry (Sunday at 10:05 and 10:36 respectively), seat-racing is under way with many rowers competing for the coveted Charles boat seats.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our creative uniforms at the last two Head of the Kevins, next time we’ll be repping the stripes!

Andrew Hashway and 2012 World Championships

Andrew Hashway strikes a pose.

Tell us, how did you get started in rowing?
I started rowing my freshman year at Saint John’s high school in Shrewsbury, MA; one of my friend’s parents thought it would be nice for all of the kids from our town to participate in the same sport. Seeing as no one really has any prior experience with rowing before high school, it was a level playing field for us all. I also knew that I was not a superstar on my baseball or football teams, so I figured why not. I do remember that one thing I was not happy about was that fact that I had to wear spandex to participate… oh how times have changed!

When did you join Riverside?
I joined Riverside in the summer of 2007, partially due to a strong suggestion from Will Allen. He had rowed with me at college and knew my personality and drive and said that if I took a year off to do the backpacking trip I had planned to do in Asia, I would fall behind. So I decided I loved rowing enough to continue at a higher level, thus Riverside was the place to be, especially considering that same year the Senior World’s Lightweight Men’s Eight had been developed and qualified from Riverside, I felt that it was a good decision.

Tell us a little bit about the qualification process for World Championships.
For this year’s Senior Lightweight 8, our coach (and CRI Director), Bruce Smith employed two major tools to determine seat racing. The first is the PowerView, which is a fabulous tool that is even used in NASCAR and it can measure almost any little movement from the acceleration of the boat on the drive and recovery, to the amount of check that is produced just by getting the hands away faster or slower on the recovery. It is truly a miraculous tool. The second is the SmartOar, which is run by an RBC alum, Greg Ruckman. It was the main tool in deciding who made the boat. Essentially, it is a system that can measure the length of the stroke, the power curve created by the oarsman, the power produced as well as the stroke rate. By doing set distances and or timed pieces, Bruce and Devin, our assistant coach, were able to calculate the effectiveness of each oarsman at any given moment in the boat and then from there, choose the best-qualified rowers in the camp.

Once we handled the seat racing and internal selection process, we had to head to Princeton, NJ to race another lightweight men’s eight from Vesper, which was comprised of some rather talented rowers. Since there were only two entries, the first race was a race for lanes. We both went down the course head to head in order to determine which crew would be in the more “favorable” lane, as determined by the weather conditions on the day of the final. On the finals day, it was winner-takes-all and whoever crossed the line first, had earned the privilege to represent the United States at the 2012 Non Olympic World Championships. It goes without saying that I was very glad we had come out on top, but felt sad for a few of the guys in the Vesper eight, who I felt deserved a seat in our boat.

Tell us all about your experience in Plovdiv.
I arrived on a Sunday with the rest of my team, we flew from Logan International to Heathrow, England, then to Sofia, Bulgaria.

The course was rather nice, all man made and sort of surreal… I’ve seen the course from Worlds videos, but to be on the actual course felt weird. As the first day of the regatta came closer and closer, the course got crazier and crazier, I would liken it to the week leading up to the Head of the Charles. Every inch of that course was pulsating with elite rowers just trying to get their own workouts in as effectively as they could. It sort of felt like being home on the Charles when BU, MIT and Harvard all decide to take their entire fleets out at the same time. Lots of rough water and dodging oars and wakes.

In my off times I tried to unplug from rowing. I watched videos I had on my laptop, read a few articles about Bulgaria along with re-reading favorite parts of the book Assault on Lake Casitas, checked out what was going on in the States and of course, I slept like it was going out of style. My pre/post practices were spent plugged into my iTouch. I had all four of Dave Cooks comedic CD’s going, you just can never have too many funny jokes in a stressful situation. I also had some of my famous “angry” music to get me focused up before races. Anyone who has erged in the winter with me knows the style of music I enjoy getting ready to.

After races I did get to see parts of Plovdiv. I walked around some of the Roman ruins as well as some statues that were erected during the Soviet Union’s rule over the area. One particular statue was atop a massive hill which overlooked the vast mountain scape, quite picturesque.

What was the race progression for your event? Did you have any memorable moments during any particular race in Plovdiv?
There were two roads to the finals, the short way and the long way and we ended taking the latter. The long way involved a heat on the first day of the regatta. Since we placed 4th in that race, we had to race again the following day in the Reps for one last chance at the top six spots in the final. Sadly, we under-estimated some of the crews in our rep and we were relegated to the B Finals.

The most memorable moment for me was not that pleasant. Our four-seat, my roommate at the regatta, had come down with sun poisoning between the heats and reps, so we had to scramble for a replacement, since he was not going to be able to race. Luckily a US Junior coach keeps himself fit and thin enough to sweat down to max and hop in our boat. I can only imagine the amount of pressure he was under, knowing that he could be the deciding factor between us going to the A or B final. But no matter how much harassment he received from the other Junior coaches, warm-up through to post-race, he did something I would venture many others wouldn’t even have the gumption to try and he did it to the very best of his ability.

Hillary and Andrew

You’re a lightweight, we have to ask, what was your first post-race meal?
Ha, well for me, once I was deep into the lightweight life style, I forget how good the tastier things in life can be, so I wasn’t really craving anything post-race, but once I started eating outside my own pre-approved dietary needs, the flood gates opened up to the wonders of sugar. Once I finished my racing, the very first piece of food I ate was baklava from a local pastry department. After that, I sort of lost count of the devilish things I ate.

What future athletic endeavors are you looking forward to?
As proud of my accomplishments as I am (representing the United States), I feel that my job could have been done better. So this year I am going for it again! I am going to do a better job on the international circuit and better represent the US, Riverside, Marist, Saint John’s and my family.

Soon enough, I will be looking to transition from purely rowing to triathlons and competitive skate skiing. New sport, same amount of dedication

Results: Masters Nationals 2012

By: Todd Milne and Ernest Cook

“Stormy weather” was the theme song for this year’s regatta.  Thunderstorms delayed racing Thursday, Friday and Saturday.  Many finals were canceled on Friday.  If heats were held in those events, medals were awarded based on heat times.  So we quickly learned to go all-out in the heats, no matter what kind of lead we held. This was a huge regatta with 2000+ rowers representing 150+ clubs from around the country – the largest ever held by US Rowing – and the competition was tough.

Men’s Sweep
The team was joined this year by some youngsters – Alex Caruthers and Evan Labuzetta – and that allowed RBC to put together some very competitive A and B boats. Overall, 20 of 24 entries made it to the finals with 15 of the Riverside boats placing in the money, so nearly everyone came away with hardware.   The RBC masters sweeps team medaled in age groups A, B, C, D, E, and F and in all sweep boat classes; 2-, 4-, 4+, and 8+.  There were also medals in team sculling boats with medals in the Club and Lightweight D4x events. With fewer than 25 rowers, Riverside placed 4th among the men in the quest for the points trophy.

Notable results:  Todd Milne and Neil Harrigan blazed to a gold in the C pair.  Later they were joined by Jason McDonough-Hughes and Evan to take first place in the Club B4+ and take home an obscenely large trophy.  Alex and Shameek Sarkar also conquered the field to take gold in the A pair.

All results

Gold
Womens Ltwt B 4 x
Mens Hwt. C 2- F (Todd Milne, Neil Harrigan)
Womens Ltwt A 1 x (Alexis Sneff)
Mens Hwt. B 1x (Jim Mcgaffigan)
Mens Hwt A 2- (Alex Caruthers, Shameek Sarkar)
Mens Club B 4+

Silver
Mens Hwt C 1x Final
Mens Hwt B 4+
Womens Open C 1 x (Tina Vandersteel)
Mens Club B 8 +
Mens Club D 4x
Mens Hwt. C 4-
Womens Ltwt A 2x b (Alexis Sneff, Ashley Lanfer)

Bronze
Mens Club C 4+
Mens Ltwt E 4
Mens Club C 8 +
Mens Ltwt I 1x (Nick Daniloff)

Riverside Alumni Head to the 2012 Olympics

Greetings, Riverside!

As no doubt many of your are aware, the final boats for the 2012 Olympic Team were announced on Friday. I am very excited to announce that four Riverside alumni will be on the 2012 US Olympic Team.

Natalie Dell will be representing the USA in the Women’s Quad, which won silver at the 2011 world championships. Esther Lofgren and Meghan Musnicki will be in the flagship Women’s Eight, which won gold at the 2009, 2010 and 2011 world championships. Anthony Fahden will be rowing in the Lightweight Men’s Four, which qualified for the Olympics at the Lucerne Final Qualification regatta in May.

I would also like to recognize Hillary Saeger, who was second at the Olympic Trials at the Lightweight Women’s Double, and Will Daly, who won the trials, but came up just 1.5 seconds and one place short of qualifying for the Olympics in the Lightweight Men’s Double at Lucerne.

We are incredibly proud of all of you, and those who came so agonizingly close only underline how difficult this journey is. Congratulations, and good luck in London, Esther, Meg, Natalie and Anthony!

Go USA!
-Igor Belakovskiy, President, Riverside Boat Club