Races, 2009-2010
League Race #3 - Battle of the Bay (March 6)
Mama said there'll be days like this,
There'll be days like this Mama said
The Shirelles – Mama Said (1963)
Photo courtesy of Mike Gill
Four weeks into the 2010 Berkeley High School crew season, the team had the opportunity to measure itself against the top competition. Joining Berkeley High in League Race #3 – the Battle of the Bay – were three teams: the Marin Rowing Club, Saint Ignatius High School and our hosts, the Oakland Strokes. Facing this level of talent made for a tough day for the Jackets, for sure. But sobering results were mixed with promising ones, and even a bit of giddiness.
Photos courtesy of Eric Carlson
For the third week, bad weather threatened. That part of the challenging day actually cooperated. Not a drop of rain fell and the air was fine for a regatta, with temps in the low 60’s. For the fans, the JLAC pier provided a great view of the finish.
Back on their home course, Berkeley rowers knew the landmarks and the currents. The small size of the varsity squad, however, limited BHS's opportunities. The larger teams fielded varsity boats of eight that BHS could only watch. In all, Berkeley boats raced in only 11 of the day’s 23 events.
Photos courtesy of Eric Carlson
Novice crews provided the team's brightest highlights of the day. The women’s frosh/novice 8+ B boat won by fifteen seconds over second-place Marin. Sharing the course with the men’s varsity double (2x) – with the coaches' approval, because there were no other men's doubles entered – the eight rowers and their coxswain kept the gas on full as they chased those boys all the way to the finish line. At the end of the day, the men’s novice quad (4x) decisively beat the Strokes. Congrats to these young rowers!
Other Jacket racers worked hard in their matches, but fell short, outgunned this day by the big club teams of Marin and the Oakland Strokes. The women's frosh/novice 8+ A boat took third in its race, falling by just two seconds to second place Oakland, 20 seconds off the pace set by winner Marin. The men's frosh/novice 8+ gave St. Ignatius a good run for the third spot in its race, falling to SI by two seconds. The (varsity) men's lightweight 4+ pushed the Strokes all the way to the finish before losing by seven seconds – about a boat length of open water separating the two.
The coaches and rowers will surely take plenty of lessons from the day. After another week of practice, Berkeley will be put to further tests next weekend. On March 14, the team travels to Lake Natoma for League Race #4, where they will face Marin, Capitol Crew and Deepwater Rowing Association.
The coaches have decided to fill in an empty week with another day of racing: March 20. This date wasn’t originally on the calendar, but come on out and see the Jackets at JLAC go head to head with some other teams who won’t be heading to San Diego that weekend. We’re going to keep at it and chalk up some more wins for sure…Go Jackets!
Results at row2.com:
Women's Novice... Varsity...
Men's Novice... Varsity...
Photos: Picasa web... Eric Carlson's SmugMug gallery...
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League Race #2 - Port of Redwood City (February 27)
Photo by Mike Gill
Under foreboding skies, as word of a tsunami bearing down across the Pacific roiled the crowd, Berkeley High School faced off against Los Altos Rowing Club, Norcal Crew, Palo Alto Rowing Club and Serra High School early Saturday morning in its second league race of the season.
Photo by Mike Gill
Rowing on a course that was shifted to mesh with sailboat races, the crews had to scramble to keep organized and execute their race plans. The Jackets, showing their flexibility, stepped up their game and rallied to win a number of races and "beat some boats" in others.
Photo by Eric Carlson
For BHS Crew spectators, the Port of Redwood City venue is a head-scratcher. The starting line might be within view (this year it wasn't), but not the finish. Only half the boats launch from the dock; the others come and go, unnoticed, from boathouses along the main channel of the port. The racing action occurs out of sight. Results are relayed back to the launch area by cell phone or, as this year, simply reported by the returning rowers themselves - unofficial and unconfirmed. As the sun emerged, though, so did the picture of BHS's fortunes.
For much of the first hour and a half of racing, novice and freshman boats struggled with the "un-structuredness" of the competition. Nonetheless, for these new rowers, the morning provided valuable racing experience. After the first set of races, coxes began to understand the course. The men's freshman 8+ (eight oarsmen plus the cox) landed a third place finish. The men's varsity 4+ finished second. The coxless men's heavy (open weight) double sculled to a second-place finish, too. Improvements were being made, errors recognized and adjusted for, experience gained, learning achieved.
In the cold air, rowers sought the comfort of a patch of sunshine as they waited on the water for their starts. The men's freshman 4+, racing against novice boats (i.e., first-year rowers but not necessarily 9th graders), managed a great start, only to see it called back because two other boats had rammed. The Berkeley boat eventually finished in fourth.
Finally, after three hours of frustration, the Jackets broke through. The women's lightweight 4+ raced to a first place finish. The boat (rowed by Acacia Masri, Yael Levin, Hannah McLester and Emma Goodfield and coxed by Juliet Grodzins) survived a bump with the Palo Alto Rowing Club to win by half a boat length over Norcal. The men's lightweight 4+ (Zander Morgan, Sam Shaw, Daniel Remler and Graeme Horton, coxed by Evan Cohen) walked away from the other boats in their race. Then, the women's open-weight double won, too. Rowers Anna Linnea Rödegård and Djuna Elkan celebrated BHS's third victory in a row. (Later in the day, back at JLAC, Djuna was rewarded for steering the coxless boat to a victory with a toss into the Alameda Channel - a sweet bit of satisfaction for the BHS senior.)
Rounding out the day's events, the men's JV 4+ rowed to a strong second and the women's novice 4+ competed well, too. Turmoil had turned to progress. The sun was shining again. As the team and the parents headed home, radios turned to the news from Chile and Hawaii. An odd morning in a small corner of a vast ocean folded back into the larger current of events.
View the photo gallery
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League Race #1 - Lake Merced (Feb 14)
Photo by Eric Carlson
The 2010 season for Berkeley High Crew started on Sunday, February 14th as the team competed in its first league race of the year at Lake Merced in San Francisco. The 1500 meter distance was shorter than normal, but that didn't mean the racing would be any easier. If anything, it meant the teams would be truly sprinting from the start!
Berkeley joined the River City Rowing Club and the Pacific Rowing Club for the race. It was a quieter event than last year, with only three teams participating, but tension still found its way into the event. Throughout the day, the women's and men's teams contested a total of 15 races.
The day began inauspiciously for the Jackets. The first race was a novice men's quad event. Four racers and eight oars in each boat. Four boats started the race and two crossed the finish line. Berkeley was not among the finishers. "Where's our boat?" spectators asked. An announcement came from the judges that Berkeley had a mechanical problem. Uh-oh. Soon the boat limped across the line; one section of the boat's rigging was damaged and one oar was missing. The oar was recovered, but the boat was done for the day. Coach Chris wasn't happy, as this was an important boat for the team. It could be difficult to repair. As he said: "This rigging isn't an off-the-shelf item." But he was realistic: "Tomorrow we'll just deal with it." Needless to say, those four racers were dejected.
Just over an hour later, the same four novice men joined four fresh teammates in a novice 8 race. The fog that had shown up now and then earlier was gone and sun was shining. Fueled by anger and frustration from the mechanical troubles shortly before, the novices hit the course hard and pulled out a win! The tide had turned and the team was again stoked!
Throughout the rest of this Valentine's Day, the team was kissed with 4 more first places, two for the women (novice 8 and freshmen 8) and two for the men (lightweight 4 and doubles). There were also some "near misses," with a number of hard efforts that didn't result in wins, but provided some satisfaction and plenty of learning experience. Everyone worked extremely hard and, for what started off a bit frustratingly, this turned out to be a great day of racing!
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Success at Peninsula Indoor Rowing
Photo courtesy of Tony Elkan
Congratulations to our BHS women’s varsity and novice rowers and coxswains who participated in the Peninsula Indoor Rowing Championships on Sunday! The team had a great day--almost everyone pulled personal records, both varsity and novices. The girls swept the freshman event: 1st place - Cassidy Villeneuve, 2nd Place - Eden Teller, 3rd place - El Holland. In the women's junior open event, 6th place went to Maya Lefao.
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Good fun at the 20th anniversary Holiday Sprints
As happens each December - with this time marking the twentieth year - Berkeley High Crew alumni, some of whom have gone off to row at the collegiate level, returned to the Bay Area to challenge our current team. On December 20th, JLAC provided the setting for this year's reunion.
Three races were held that day. The first, a race of four 8s, was handily won by the novice men, a good indication of the team's future! Four boats contested in the second race: two 4s, one quad and a pair. The alumni men pulled it out, avoiding a coach's threat that they'd have to wash the boats if they lost. The final race included mixed teams and an all-coxswain boat. The mixed lightweight 8 won the race, just squeaking past the cox boat! (Sort of.) One certain Crew Board President was overheard saying something about the cox boat being a "boat full of backseat drivers." Many expressed concern that the coxes may have been slowed down by the fact that they had nine PA systems installed in that one boat. Next year, a design change could make the difference.
This year's Holiday Sprints ended with chocolate medals being awarded to race winners and prizes being handed out to winners of the Holiday Raffle. Thanks to the alumni for returning to race and to the coaches for arranging the competition. Thanks, too, to the parent-volunteers who organized and managed the event, to those who found sponsors to donate raffle prizes and to the rowers who sold the tickets. The raffle proceeds support crew's scholarship program, so a special thanks is due to the sponsors for their wonderful and generous contributions. Thank you all for making the 2009 Holiday Sprints a success!
Happy Holidays and get ready for the 2010 season!
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BHS Crew starts year with success at Bair Island Regatta
Photos courtesy of Mark Shaw (top left), Eric Carlson
Under schizophrenic skies that were cool, cloudy, sunny, and even a little rainy, Berkeley High School Crew was anything but uneven at the Bair Island Aquatic Center's 18th annual Fall Regatta on November 22nd. The Yellow Jackets took six first-place medals against boats from Los Gatos Rowing Club, NorCal Crew, Palo Alto Rowing Club, Stockton Rowing Club and UC Davis. Both the women and the men enjoyed success, even winning together at the end of the day in a mixed boat.
For this first regatta of the year, the course was long and challenging: five kilometers in length rather than two, with sharp turns complicating the typical straight-away. As Coach Chris Dadd explained, "This is a cox's race course." With so many corners, an adept coxswain can help seal a win.
The point was proven by the mens open 4x, or quad. The BHS coaches wanted to use a cox, even though it would mean hauling an additional 120 pounds. After discussions about fairness, the coaches of the competing crews agreed to let Berkeley have its extra body. Coach Dadd urged his rowers not to give up, even if they found themselves behind for the first 2000 meters; the cox would give them the advantage in the curvy final 3000 meters. The strategy paid off in Berkeley's third medal of the day!
The medal count began early for Berkeley Crew. The womens lightweight 4+ raced to a 17-second victory, led by a varsity rower in her first competition as cox. The mens lightweight 4+ followed with a 31-second win in the mens junior (open weight) 4+ category. Two hours later, this group improved their time by 41 seconds to take first place in the lightweight category. The womens junior novice 8+ negotiated the course without penalty on their way to a medal, and not long after that, in a hot-seated, bagel-fueled finale, the mens lightweight 4+ joined the rowers of the womens lightweight 4 to win the mixed junior 8+.
In all, Berkeley's rowers -- novice and varsity -- worked hard and rowed well. The coaches were certainly pleased. Hopefully, the successes of this first day of competition for the 2009-10 season are a good omen for the spring season that starts in February. Follow the Web site for race schedule details and come on out and support the Jackets!
Results (download)
Photos:
PicasaWeb Gallery
Eric Carlson's photos on SmugMug
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