The event that floods the city of Boston every October has come and gone. The winners have been immortalized in the cold waters of the Charles River and the Massachusetts rowing team competed nobly in its two events.
"I felt it was real promising," said UMass coach Jim Dietz. "It was a very aggressive race. We had a lot of speed in the first mile and a half and then the conditioning really showed in the last third of the races."
The lightweight 8 boat started off in the 11th position and hit some rough spots during its race as it picked up a 20-second penalty.
This penalty turned costly as UMass dropped from 12th to 13th place in between the Trent and Penn State squads.
The penalty took the Minutewomen from 19 minutes, 3.758 seconds to a time of 19:23.758, just seconds behind Trent.
The London Training Center won the lightweight 8 at 16:15.442, dominating the race. The next closest crew was Princeton at 17:18.602 in second, followed by Wisconsin with 17:22.141 coming in third place.
The championship 8 boat started off in the 28th spot and ended up climbing up to 27th by the end of the race. Out of the 39 boats in this event, U.S. Rowing Princeton Training Center came out on top at 15:26.572, trailed by London Training Center (15:39.412) and Michigan (16:21.651).
The Minutewomen finished on the tail of defending national champion Yale (17:27.728) with a time of 17:37.897.
"It's like rolling through a carnival. Tou got 200,000 people screaming the whole three-mile course it makes it go real quick," said Dietz.
"It's something these young girls will get to learn from and have as an experience to look back at."
Over the last couple of weeks, there has been a mention of the stroke rating (the amount of strokes per minute) and this past weekend had the rating up to 30-31 strokes per minute.
"It was important, but not a main focus. Our conditioning is our priority," Dietz said.
"The first stage we were leading [Rhode Island] by six seconds, then
the second stage by nine seconds, and then we ended up only up by two seconds. That
is where our conditioning shows," Dietz said. "This early burst shows evident strength and power through the first mile and a half, but the conditioning cannot carry us
through to the end of the races."
This upcoming weekend has the Minutewomen at the Head of the Fish Regatta in Saratoga, N.Y.
Coley Michalik can be reached at emichali@student.umass.edu.
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