Not long after the gates opened for the boat yard in Mercer County Park, trailers from the top men's and lightweight women's collegiate teams from around the country began pulling onto the grass and setting up home base for the three-day 2018 IRA Regatta.
Athletes unloading and rigging boats and oars, joked with each other and friends from other teams. The mood was all about light banter, first rows, and expectations.
Tomorrow morning, the thoughts of completing a season of training, erg tests, and racing to reach the IRA Championships - and what each squad hoped to accomplish - would move from the excitement of the unknown to the reality of being a step closer to reaching - or missing - goals set early in the season for this single weekend.
But for Wednesday and Thursday morning, every athlete was just enjoying the moment and thinking of the what ifs, of how a season of success could become a spot in a championship final - or not.
"We're excited and we've prepared for this," said Riona McCormick, who will be stroking the Boston University women's varsity lightweight eight. "We've worked very hard, and we're exactly where we want to be.
"We had a really great season, and a good last couple of weeks of training. Everyone is doing well. We're really excited to go race our best, we're excited to see what happens," she said.
What should happen, at least according to the collegiate polls and pre-regatta seeding, is that BU's women should contend for a national title after a solid season of dual racing and winning the eight at Eastern Sprints a few weeks ago.
Stanford, which closed the year ranked first in the women's lightweight poll voting, will also be in the conversation for the championship, as will Wisconsin, and Princeton, and Harvard-Radcliffe, who all ranked in the top five.
"Everything feels good, feels loose, and pretty relaxed," said BU coach Malcolm Doldron. "That's what we're looking for. We're enjoying the moment, enjoying the end of the year, enjoying that last week of rowing and training and racing together.
"Really, our expectations are that we have our best races. And that's all we have to do and all the rest of it for us is noise. We're really dialed into what we want to do, we want to stay composed and do our thing."
And that is really any one of the 24 men's teams, and seven women's lightweight programs, can ask for in the days before the racing begins.
These three days on Mercer Lake in West Windsor, NJ, have been on each coach and athlete calendar since the doors opened to their home boat houses last fall, when the college year began.
But stressing about it, explained Columbia lightweight John Robison, does nothing to improve the chances of success, no matter how bright the spotlight is - and Columbia should be considered in the spotlight after winning at Sprints.
"I don't believe in expectations, or making things bigger than they should be," he said. "Big picture is, it's just rowing, it's not anything that serious. It's just like a fun sport that we come here to play.
"We train hard, and we do hard things, but at the end of the day, it's just a sport. It won't matter in a year or two. So, I want to have fun doing it.
"Of course, it matters right now, but if you can have fun doing it, you're going to win. There is no reason to get all stressed about it. It doesn't do any good. If you're all stressed about it, you're going to lose."
The IRA pre-regatta seeding pretty much tells the story of how each season has gone so far.
The University of Washington is at the top followed by Cal, Yale, Harvard and Brown in the top five for the varsity eights.
When the racing starts, all that could change, but right now, just about every coach agrees that the "rankings make sense."
That was how Yale head coach Steve Gladstone summed up the early view Wednesday just after his two top eights launched for their first practice following a week of mostly steady state work at Gales Ferry in Connecticut.
"You've got the two West Coast schools, Cal and Washington right up at the top ranks, and if you look at history, those are the crews that are usually winning this regatta. At least for the past 20 years."
But not last year.
Yale is the defending IRA champs in the varsity eight and they are having another top season, coming in as the third seed. But they have not raced Washington. The only loss of the year was to Cal at the San Diego crew classic and they hold the 2018 Sprints title.
"Everybody here is going to give it a shot," Gladstone said. "My guys have a lot of confidence in what they can do, so we'll see how it matches up." Gladstone was also quick to point out that Sprints was two weeks ago, and teams have had time to practice and make adjustments.
"What happened at the Sprints is not necessarily what happens at the IRA," he said. "It would be a big mistake to make to make the assumption that that is going to be the case. "People make changes.
"It's an open field, and it's a three-day regatta, and there are lots of vagaries. We came here in 2015 after having won the sprints and we were in the small finals at the IRA. Not a very pleasant experience. It was followed by a very pleasant experience. Setting a course record at New London (in the Harvard-Yale dual) and then winning at Henley. But that day was not a happy day."
Yale stroke man, Sholto Carnegie, has been in the varsity eight for four years, has won four Sprints titles, and knows the success and failure of what can happen at an IRA outside of the seeding, and he echoes the feeling of his coach.
"We're thinking about keeping our heads between the gunnels, pressing our strokes as hard and long as possible, and going in and doing what we know how to do every day, day in and day out, what we did last year, what we do this year, same again," he said.
So, feeling the pressure?
"No not really," Carnegie said. "We just keep doing our thing. Steve sets out mindset in a good way, and we do what we know how to do, it's automatic. We're excited and we're just here to have fun."
While Washington did not win the varsity eight last year, they did win the Ten Eyck points trophy. Cal has also had a solid year, but have lost twice to Washington, including at the Pac-12 Championship.
All of that was weeks ago and right now the only expectation for the Cal crew is putting the training and the season's lessons to use.
"We don't really think about the expectations," said Cal's Joachim Sutton. "We're just here and trying to go as fast as we can. It's pretty simple for us. We've done a lot of training, and so we just want to race.
"There are a lot of guys that have a lot of experience, and so it's very emotional with the seniors graduating and stuff like that" he said. "But it's still a rowing race and it's still simple in that regard."
Also in the hunt for medals are Brown, Harvard and Princeton.
Brown was swept by Yale in the first set of duals on the schedule, then beat Harvard in the top varsity, but dropped the second, third and fourth varsity matchups that weekend. The same thing happened against Northeastern and Princeton the next two weekends.
Princeton finished out of the medals (fourth) at Sprints in the varsity eight. Harvard took silver and Brown was third. But each team had success in the lower boats, have proven depth throughout the roster, and they will be in position to race for titles at Mercer.
Still, every team has expectations based on how they raced and developed from last year to this, and some have set what are considered to be realistic - and challenging - goals.
Northeastern is one of those teams. They finished seventh last year in the varsity eight, and are hoping to move up at least one position.
"The seeding looks right to me," said Husky head coach, John Pojednic. "It's a really competitive field, and I think that we're looking at what it takes to make the A final. For where we are, that's a really big challenge. That's not easy to do.
"We finished seventh last year and, it's funny, we feel like we have a much, much stronger team, but we feel like we are in a similar place. We're just trying to get on the other side of that. The team is excited to race.
"I think we figured a lot of things out," Pojednic said. "We'll see if we've gotten anywhere. We took a hard look at our lineups, and I think we learned that we were right about them for the most part. We made a couple of changes that I think might help. We took the risk of training really hard, so we'll see if it pays off.
"In the construct of our sport, the national championship race is the A final. If we can make it into the A final race, that would mean success for us, and if not, we fell short. That's kind of where we are and we own that. We know that there is no guarantee, and according to the seeding we shouldn't make it," he said.
"So, we'll see if the work we've done has gotten us anywhere relative to Sprints. We have a great squad, and I think they have a bright future, but right now we're in the here and now. We're at the IRA. This is not about let's set ourselves up for next year. It's about what can we do right here. And that's what's great about it."
Notes from the Course
We start this regatta with a note about the weather - of course!
Just about every regatta this spring as had some variation of unpleasant meteorology. Last weekend, the NCAA was shortened by a day to accommodate Tropical Storm Alberto, which set up in the Gulf of Mexico and then drove bands of heavy rain and winds into Florida and Nathan Benderson Park, before moving up the East Coast and - yep - New Jersey.
The heavy rain added to the spring swelled lake and pushed the banks up over the walking paths and park benches, closing off the picturesque gazebo right about 750-to go in the course.
The forecast has rain and wind and storms in the forecast and warrant keeping an eye on the sky and the schedule.
As for the schedule, it has already changed and the Friday heats have been compressed. Go here to see the new schedule.
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05/31/2018 11:11:30 AM
05/31/2018 11:28:21 AM