CAMDEN, N.J. – Normally, when a crew wins a national championship, they go to the medals podium together – coach and crew – collect the hardware and pose for the celebratory pictures.
That’s not always the case at club nationals where crews often row more than one event, or in the case of many of the athletes from the USRowing Development Camp – Wisconsin Men, seven.
So they just sent one member of the crew up to collect the gold medals they won in the men’s intermediate eight Friday morning in the first of the finals at the 2013 USRowing Club National Championships on the Cooper River in Camden, N.J.
“It’s been good, so far. A win is always good,” said coach Beau Hoopman. “We try to get them as many races as possible in the summer. This is the first real race we do and we’ve only been rowing since June 20th.”
Hoopman is the assistant men’s coach at the University of Wisconsin and this event is good training for the men from the Wisconsin team that are participating. “We have 42 here and 51 one in the camp. There were a couple of guys that had class and other conflicts, but we try to bring everybody here.”
Hoopman knows about hard training. He spent nine-years with the United States national team and rowed in two Olympics, winning gold in the men’s eight and setting a world record in 2004 in Athens, Greece, and bronze in 2008 in Beijing. “We just try to desensitize them to racing, making them do a lot of racing, try to get them like 17 races while they are here.
“So guys, by the end of the summer, between this and the Canadian Henley, will get like 30 trips down the course, 30 (2000-meter races) so it’s just a way to make them not fear one race during the season.”
While the Wisconsin men are shooting for 17 races between heats, semifinals and finals, it is not the case for all of the athletes competing during the five-day regatta running from July 10-14.
Some are only doing two or three, and a few are limiting themselves to one event.
But out of the 34 finals run Friday morning, it’s a safe bet that most are competing in multiple events, especially since a schedule change made necessary by the increase in the junior divisions, splits the events into two groups for the regatta this year.
Under the new schedule, the first 37 events were contested Wednesday to Friday morning with the next 34 events scheduled for Sunday finals. After finals Friday morning, the first 13 events were run with time trials Friday afternoon. The rest will be rowed in a heats, semifinal, and final format beginning Saturday morning.
Many of the crews racing here are also preparing for other, upcoming summer events, including the Royal Canadian Henley, August 4-11 in St. Catharines, Ontario, and the World Rowing Junior Championships, August 7-11, 2013, Trakai, Lithuania.
Rowing in the same event with the intermediate college men in the eight were the USRowing Junior Men’s Selection Camp and the USRowing High Performance Camp. The Wisconsin intermediate eight won the race in a time of 5:59.43, followed by the USRowing selection camp crew in 6:04.60, and the high performance camp crew in 6:06.40.
Like the men, crews from the USRowing junior women’s sweep and sculling selection camps are racing against older, more experienced crews to prepare for the coming international competition.
The sculling selection camp junior women’s quadruple sculls crew is entered in both the intermediate and senior quad events and won the intermediate event Friday morning. With just two events this weekend, they did go together for the medals presentation and pictures.
Last summer, two members of the crew took silver in the senior-junior world championships in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. It was the first ever medal for the United States in the event.
“It’s going really well,” said Cicely Madden (Weston, Mass.), a member of last year’s crew. “I love the girls in the boat. We’re getting along well and I feel that’s really important in the boat dynamic, to really translate that onto the water.
“We’re feeling powerful, we’re cleaning up our technique and we’re really excited for Lithuania.”
At club nationals, there is something for everyone from senior to under 16 juniors winning their first ever-national championships, like the Crescent Boat Club’s junior B double sculls crew.
“This feels good coming in first,” said Benjamin Weaver. “It was a hard race. We were behind in the first thousand and then we walked back in the last five hundred,” he said.
“It was pretty good,” said William Schmidt. “Last year we got third in the quad and this year I just wanted to come back and be better and faster than I was before.”
With the conclusion of the morning finals, the event switched gears and went to time trials and heats for the events that will go to finals on Sunday.
Racing will resume Saturday morning with heats and semifinals.
Sunday finals will be live streamed. Watch Live Racing Here.
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