Left to right: USRowing Training Center - Oklahoma City's Devery Karz, Michelle Sechser, coach Jeremy Ivey, Ellen Tomek and Meghan O'Leary.
PRINCETON, N.J. - Saturday’s final of the lightweight women’s double sculls was a race that Michelle Sechser had visualized a thousand times in her head back home in Oklahoma City.
By the time the Folsom, Calif. native and her teammate Devery Karz (Park City, Utah) arrived at Mercer Lake in West Windsor, N.J., to race at 2014 National Selection Regatta 2 , they had logged hundreds of training hours in preparation for the fierce competition they knew would meet here.
Saturday, the OKC duo won the final, and along with four other winning crews this weekend, now have the opportunity to race at a World Rowing Cup event and earn a spot on the team that will represent the U.S. at the 2014 World Rowing Championships August 24-31, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
In addition to the lightweight women’s double, finals in the men’s and women’s double sculls and men’s pair were contested on Saturday. Friday’s final of the lightweight men’s double sculls saw the Cambridge Boat Club-Green Racing Project composite entry of Austin Meyer (Cohoes, N.Y.) and Joshua Konieczny (Millbury, Ohio) dominate the field.
For Sechser and Karz, today’s win is a stepping stone toward a much bigger goal.
“We are just trying to hit the check points on the way towards the bigger goal of Rio,” said Sechser, who finished seventh in the lightweight women’s single at the 2013 World Rowing Championships and won the event at the 2014 NSR 1. “Having Devery as a partner is incredible. She’s very mature and collected for someone so young in her rowing career. It was really exciting to be with her and kind of have that new energy in the boat. I couldn’t ask for a better partner. ”
In the final, the OKC double was in second place going in the sprint, with California Rowing Club’s Kate Bertko (Oakland, Calif.) and Kristin Hedstrom (Concord, Mass.) leading the pack. Bertko, a four-time national team athlete and 2013 USRowing Female Athlete of the Year, and London Olympian Hedstrom won silver in the event at the 2013 World Rowing Championships. Sechser and Karz brought up their rate in the final stretch to cross two seconds ahead of the CRC double in a 6:58.72.
“You know, we set this goal when we first got in the boat together back in March, and today there were incredible racers out there,” said Sechser. “Berkto and Hedstrom are incredible competitors. We kept calm and stuck to the plan, even when we were down, and just started attacking, attacking.
“I felt very hyper-sensitive to every emotion, every proprioception that was going through my body. We’ve both visualized that race a hundred times, every different scenario. And I’ve been picturing that moment in my head for months. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to race NSR 2 last year and have a shot then, and that was tough. In my head, I’d already raced this race a thousand times. Today, it was just showing up, hitting that gazebo (at the 1,500-meter mark) and knowing exactly how to execute. I think we’re still a little bit in awe of what happened. It hasn’t really set in.”
The USRowing Training Center - Oklahoma City women’s double sculls crew also saw success in the final. In the first race off the line, Beijing Olympian Ellen Tomek (Flushing, Mich.) and Meghan O’Leary (Baton Rouge, La.) pushed past the Southern California Scullers Club-Cambridge Boat Club composite entry of Stesha Carle (Long Beach, Calif.) and London Olympian and NSR 1 single winner, Gevvie Stone (Newton, Mass.) to win by nearly four seconds. Tomek and O’Leary clocked a 6:54.47 to Carle and Stone’s 6:59.20.
“I think going into this, we felt like we had something to prove coming back from last year, and we’ve done a lot of preparation to bring the boat together,” said O’Leary, who finished seventh in the event with Tomek in Chungju. “And we’re just at the beginning. We’re excited about this, but it’s step one of many.”
“For us, there is a little bit of pressure being the boat that was the double last year, coming back at the NSR. Everyone is out to get you,” said Tomek. “That being said, we didn’t have our best performance at worlds last year, and we wanted to show we had more. And we want to start that here at the NSR, and take it over internationally this summer.”
“The exciting thing is, we know we have a couple more gears,” added O’Leary. “It was a great race for all boats, but we have more. And it’s only going to get more competitive. We’re further along than we were last year at this point. Our ceiling is raised even more and we’re excited to see what we can do.”
Next up in the final of the men’s double sculls, Craftsbury Sculling Center’s Benjamin Dann (Pound Ridge, N.Y.) and John Graves (Cincinnati, Ohio) posted a time of 6:16.21 for the win. Dann and Graves, who finished 10th in the event at the 2013 World Rowing Championships, held off the charge of Potomac Boat Club’s Sam Stitt (McLean, Va.) and Willy Cowles (Farmington, Conn.), who finished second in 6:18.90. Craftsbury’s Stephen Whelpley (Mequon, Wis.), who finished 13th in the single at the 2013 world championships and won the men’s single event at NSR 1, and London Olympian Peter Graves (Cincinnati, Ohio) crossed less than a second back in third with a 6:19.96.
“It was fun, and we had a good fight,” said Graves. “Pete and Steve had a really good first thousand. We took the rate up a few notches and we had a good last 750 at a pretty high rate. I am feeling healthier than I was at NSR 1. It’s a nice day, and it’s a good course to crush it.”
In the men’s pair, USRowing Training Center - Princeton’s Henrik Rummel (Pittsford, N.Y.), a London bronze medalist in the men’s four, and Seth Weil (Menlo Park, Calif.) won in 6:28.89. USTC - Princeton’s Tom Dethlefs (Lawrenceville, N.J.) and Nareg Guregian (North Hills, Calif.) crossed second in 6:30.03, with teammates Matthew Miller (Springfield, Va.) and Rob Munn (Redmond, Wash.) less than a second back in third with a time of 6:30.44.
Rummel and Weil were members of the men’s four that won bronze at the 2013 World Rowing Championships.
“We got out well, and then from the 250 to the 500, people started moving back on us,” said Rummel. “We had a little push, and they came back. Once we got into a rhythm and the race settled out a little bit, our base speed was moving. It was good, we got to delay our race calls and execute a good sprint.
“We were rowing a little bit better today than we had been,” he said. “We’ve been very even with the Miller and Munn pair (in practice), and I didn’t expect us to get out like we did. But we took it, and were able to keep moving.”
For complete race results, including Saturday’s B finals, visit www.usrowing.org.
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