NCAA Rowing Championships Blog: Days 3-4
5/29/2008 12:00:00 AM | Rowing
Michigan's first varsity eight earned an at-large bid to the 2008 NCAA Championships, which are being held May 30-June 1 in Sacramento, Calif. The Wolverines left for the West Coast on Saturday (May 24) to get in some advance training in the Northern California conditions that they will experience later this week.
Reporting on the team's travel exploits from Sacramento is junior Julia Nelson, who is an English and French major. Nelson's third entry is a mix of humor and seriousness as racing is just hours away now.
THURSDAY | MAY 29, 2008
"If you break a 1:30 on this 500, I will do a somersault off the front of the launch."
This is the motivation (head coach) Mark (Rothstein) used to try to get us to tackle a blunt headwind at the end of a long day (on Tuesday). A nameless rower wasn't convinced, so she wagered, "If we break 1:30, can we invite those boys to our barbeque tonight" A passing crew with shirtless boys had been practicing at the same time as us that day. The faces of everyone were either wrinkled in contemplation or wide-eyed and open-mouthed with disbelief, except for the goof herself. Her face was plastered with a grin, pleased with her ability to catch us all off guard, breaking her usual straight-faced, focused demeanor while in the boat.
Those who know our boat will never guess who it was. The shock value was epic. How to react -- shake our heads and laugh, kind of like we've been doing all week. We deal with pressure, apparently, by letting our guards down and acting silly. We did not get our goal for that piece, so the shirtless boys did not attend our fiesta, but her comment will endure.
Now that I've got my instigating story out of my system, we're about to race at NCAAs. The rest of the teams are here, our last morning practice has ended, our spare pair is racing this afternoon. The time is here.
(Senior) Annie Hildebrand is the only Michigan rower who has raced at NCAAs before considering we haven't come for the past two years. She's the wise one leading the way and the rest of us are fresh meat, and by that I mean fresh, and ready to sizzle. Absence has only made the heart grow fonder.
Our heat is going to be bright and early tomorrow morning at 8:15 a.m. That means we'll be awake, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 5:15 -- no big deal. Our competition is Stanford, Washington, Clemson and (defending national champion) Brown. They're all blazing fast, and they will force us to row better than we have all year. We wouldn't have it any other way.
We have T-shirts that we made during the long, fretful months of winter training that say: "It's not once a year, it's every day." We showed up every day with the goal of making it to NCAAs, and it is a goal we have realized. The entirety of our team is not here, but our boat would not be here without them, and they are just as much a part of Michigan being here as each of us who is here. We want to honor our efforts, our teammates, and our competition by putting our whole hearts into these next few days.
It is great to be a Michigan Wolverine. It is great to have this opportunity. The spirit is alive in California.
Let's... Go... Blue.
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