Club crew team competing in first regatta this weekend

Of the 28 active rowers on this fall's varsity and novice crew teams, 21 are freshmen, but new coaches and a motivated executive board have everyone ready for the fall season.

"Everything has been revamped this year," sophomore Publicity Chairwoman Lindsay Deacon said. "It's such a positive thing. The team is going to be a lot more dedicated. That's something I'm really happy about."

Senior Vice President Lauren Jones said the freshmen rowers were mostly novices but there were also a lot of freshmen in the varsity boat, which created a strong foundation for the team to continue.

"I hope they stay," Deacon said about the novice rowers. "The freshmen have so much potential. We have 16 rowers, eight men and eight women, and alternates. There were so many we couldn't put them all in boats.

"What we need is a bunch of people the same age. If everyone sticks with the team it will be such a solid team. The next four years are going to be great."

President Dave Paolantonio said there was usually a high turnover among rowers. Among the active rowers, Paolantonio is the only senior, and there are two juniors and four sophomores.

This weekend at the Occoquan Challenge, only the men's varsity lightweight and heavyweight boats will compete, which Jones said would allow the novice teams to watch and get motivated for their first race. She said asking the novice rowers to compete this weekend with little experience would shoot down their morale.

"They're going to cheer on the team and figure out what the race is like," Paolantonio said. "We're teaching novices great technique. We're not worried about competing."

Deacon said she thought the freshmen varsity rowers would be less overwhelmed because they were competing with people who knew the race.

"I've done this regatta before," Deacon said, "and I didn't have a clue what I was doing. This race has a turn -- I didn't know how to turn a boat."

Deacon said Paolantonio was the dominant force in keeping the team behaved during practices. The novices are usually focused because they're still learning, she said.

"Because we aren't D-I, we aren't getting scholarship rowers," Deacon said. "We had problems with people taking it seriously."

The men's varsity heavyweight boat has six water practices each week, with some land practices as well. The men's varsity lightweight boat has four water practices and two land practices each week.

"It's a lot different than it was three years ago," Jones said. "Exec is not there to be your friend. We're your coaches. We're your exec board. We're in charge of you."

Paolantonio said there were two facets to consider with practices -- the frequency of practice and the intensity of practice itself. He has turned up the intensity of each practice, but limited the number of water practices so that instead of six mediocre water practices, there were four good ones.

"It was frustrating coming from an intense high school," said sophomore Fundraising Chairman Tim Webster. "The heavyweight freshmen come from some really competitive programs.

"Because [the club is] student-run, there's a lot of stuff outside rowing you have to worry about. We have the potential to be more competitive, but it takes years of hard work."

Paolantonio said he was excited to see that everyone was so intense about the team this fall. He said the team was smaller, but it was dedicated during practice and ate dinners together after practice.

In addition to the executive board, there are two new coaches responsible for leading the team. Tamara Highsmith, who was a heavyweight rower at Cornell University, met Paolantonio during the summer and volunteered to coach the team.

Highsmith, who isn't paid, coaches practices three to four times a week and Paolantonio said she was always e-mailing him and sophomore Gabriela Timoney to plan how to structure the week's practices. Timoney, the team's head coach, secretary and men's lightweight coxswain, decided not to row this semester.

Bill McManus, who was a coxswain at the University of Pennsylvania and competed for the United States at the world championships, is currently a coxswain's coach. McManus has less time than Highsmith, Paolantonio said, but when he does come to practices it benefits the them. There is one coxswain for each boat to direct the rowers during the race.

"I like these two coaches because they see me as varsity but understand that I need help," Deacon said. "Having one coach specifically for coxswains is wonderful."

The team usually travels to four or five regattas each semester, Deacon said. She said the team focused on preparing and training during the fall because the majority of people were novice rowers, and few people joined during the spring.

The team can also begin fall practices much earlier than spring practices, Deacon said. There's a period at the start of the spring semester when the team can't get on the docks, which makes it harder to train novices.

"The way the team has been revamped, the people with the team will be with the team," Deacon said. "It's going to go from crew pride to crew obsession. We'll be living and breathing crew."

President Edward Ayers is coming to watch the men row at Head of the Charles regatta on Oct. 18 and 19, and Paolantonio said he hoped Ayers' presence in the alumni tent would make alumni enthused with the team's progress. The men's varsity lightweight boat will compete at the Head of the Charles and Webster said he would race unaffiliated in a single boat.

"It's like the World Series of crew," Paolantonio said about Head of the Charles. "We're going to get into as great a shape as we can and try not to embarrass ourselves. We're just honored to be participating."

Paolantonio didn't know exact numbers, but he said there were up to a thousand teams from across the world that came to the Head of the Charles, including the U.S. national team. The Occoquan Challenge would have a smaller turnout, about 100 teams, and Paolantonio said it would be a good warm-up for the season.

Paolantonio said the team would not compete at one of its usual regattas, the Head of the Schuylkill on Oct. 25 and 26, because it had been rained out the past few years and would conflict with the team's plans to hold an alumni tailgate at the homecoming football game. All four boats will compete at the Head of the South in Augusta, Ga., on Nov. 8, Jones said.

Even though the Head of the South isn't as big as the Head of the Charles, Paolantonio said it was great because the weather had always been nice and the team would have the chance to compete against big-name schools from the south, which isn't usually known for crew.

Deacon said she hoped that if the team entered more regattas and did better in those regattas, the team might start to attract people who would be dedicated to the crew program.

"Our main goal is to become a crew team other schools know about and are afraid of," Jones said. "Our exec board has worked hard to bring new things to our team and we hope future exec boards will work as hard as we did to keep building on our team."

Contact staff writer Barrett Neale at barrett.neale@richmond.edu