OAK RIDGE, Tenn. – There are two words that best describe the scene at Melton Hill Lake the day before racing in the USRowing Youth National Championships begins – controlled chaos.
In a space that is about two-football fields long, but only 90-feet deep, Allen Eubanks, regatta workers and volunteers were cramming 52 trailers packed with boats of all sizes and creating a staging area for the 1,300 athletes that will compete here for a national title over June 7-9.
Luckily Eubanks, head coach of the local host organization, the Oak Ridge Rowing Association, has done this before. This is their third youth nationals and 2013 is no different.
“It’s a challenge,” Eubanks said. “Every rowing venue you go to is limited in one thing, and that’s trailer parking. So because you don’t know how many are coming or who’s riding with who, you don’t know how many are coming.
“Normally you can count one trailer per team. But here, a team may be one boat, or it could be 12 boats, so trying to figure out that math and give people enough space, it’s a challenge,” he said. “If they are four boats, or four or five teams, on a trailer you want to give people space to work.
“This will settle down tonight and then tomorrow we start launching boats and then it’s the chaos to get out on the water,” he said.
And so, all morning and into the afternoon, coaches pulling crew trailers slowly nosed their way down the tiny path to find a spot to back their trucks into tight spaces.
Just after noon, Kourtney de Haas, president of the Austin Rowing Club, was one of those coaches. He managed to get a trailer loaded with boats from six Texas based teams into his space with only a slight angle issue.
He had the look of a guy who had just completed a 16-hour trip that began at 6 am the day before and ended in the heat and humidity of Oak Ridge. But he was not complaining, he’s done it before.
“A lot of the coaches will answer in the same way, if you’ve been coming here for many years, it’s always a joy to come to this regatta,” he said. “Coaching youths is where it’s at in rowing in this country, I think. Spending a couple of days at Oak Ridge, or where ever the regatta is, is always fun.
“I don’t feel the energy right now just because we’ve been driving,” he said. “But the kids are going to be here in about two hours and that’s when the energy changes, and the focus turns on, and they go out and practice. And it’s all the usual things, practice winning.”
For complete event information visit, http://www.usrowing.org/Events/YouthNationals.aspx.
For more 2013 Youth National Championships news and features, visit http://www.usrowing.org/Events/YouthNationals/2013YNCPress.aspx.
Saturday semifinals and Sunday finals will be broadcast live on USRowing’s You Tube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/usrowingorg.
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