Thursday, November 29, 2007

Results


Northeastern Women's Rowing V = Varsity

6000m Erg Test 11/28/07
F = Freshman




F/W = Freshman Walk-on

Name: Time: Average: PR? Exp.
1 Griffeth, Ashley 22:58.1 01:54.8
V
2 Sparano, Meredith 23:07.9 01:55.6 X V
3 Bruno, Ashley 23:18.3 01:56.5
V
4 Forbes, Jen 23:41.6 01:58.5 X F
5 Padilla, Anna 23:51.7 01:59.3 X V
6 Shafer, Francie 23:58.4 01:59.8 X V
7 Ketcham, Jillise 24:01.2 02:00.1
V
8 Townsend, Ronnie 24:01.8 02:00.2 X F
9 Carroll, Laura 24:10.5 02:00.8
F
10 Durrant, Alida 24:13.1 02:01.0
V
11 Ward, Katie 24:20.1 02:01.7 X F
12 Little, Kylie 24:25.7 02:02.2 X F/W
13 Garabedian, Rachel 24:30.4 02:02.5 X V
14 Yard, Kailyn 25:02.5 02:04.8 X F
15 Wintermeyer, Delaney 25:11.2 02:05.9
F
16 Johnson, Annaliese 25:17.7 02:06.4 X F
17 Lane, Nina 25:18.9 02:06.6 X F/W
18 Guss, Raquel 25:27.9 02:07.3 X F/W
19 Smith, Ashley 25:29.7 02:07.4
V
20 DeCesar, Bridget 25:51.5 02:09.3 X F/W
21 Biddle, Liz 25:53.3 02:09.4
F
22 Gerstein, Rebecca 25:56.9 02:09.7 X F
23 Brand, Sarah 26:01.7 02:10.1 X F
24 Hoekstra, Geneva 26:06.6 02:10.5 X F/W
25 Patteson, Hilary 26:11.9 02:11.0 X F/W
26 Pino, Lindsay 26:21.5 02:11.8 X F/W
27 Rowan, Kayleigh 26:39.3 02:13.3 X F/W
28 Karcich, Lisa 26:43.7 02:13.5
F
29 Belanger, Heather 26:46.5 02:13.9 X F/W
30 Ciminelli, Maria 26:56.3 02:14.6 X F
31 McCusker, Meghan 27:03.2 02:16.2 X F
32 Bernstein, Dallas 27:18.5 02:16.6 X F/W
33 Snoey, Robin 27:41.0 02:18.4 X F
34 Catanzaro, Regan 27:44.2 02:18.6 X F
35 Meritz, Rebecca 28:02.8 02:20.2 X F/W
36 Ledwell, Allison 28:38.5 02:23.2 X F/W
37 Darby-Matteoda, Bianca Rx Rx
F/W
38 Breen, Hester Rx Rx
F/W
39 Ghilardi, Christina Rx Rx
F/W
40 Zeh, Heather Rx Rx
V
41 Fisher, Emily Rx Rx
V

The Horizon

What's on the horizon for the Huskies?

Presently they're in their final evaluation week of the fall season. An evaluations consists of three ergometer (rowing machine) tests: 40-minute test, 6000m test, 2000m test. These primarily measure fitness, but three of the most challenging tests in one week with weight circuits in between the testing days creates a tough atmosphere. Because of this, the tests are very good indicators of mental toughness: who can perform three times in one week during grueling physically and mentally draining workouts? When you take a test on the erg, unlike running or swimming, your power/speed output is right in front of you on a monitor. You can see your splits every stroke and know exactly where you are in the test and how well you're doing. This can be the challenging part.

The evaluation week will begin the selection for the spring. From now through the Florida winter training trip, winter training on land during January and February, and the Tennessee spring training trip, the whole team will be evaluated. In women's rowing, unlike men's rowing, freshman can row up in varsity events their first year if they can make an impact on the speed of the varsity boats. So many of the freshman are being considered for this and this time is very important. Some of the walk-on athletes are stunning the team: freshman walk-on Kylie Little took her first 6000m test ever and had the 12th fastest time out of 41, smoking some experienced sophomores and freshman who've been rowing for years.

Now is the time to make some noise, Huskies! Train hard.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Foot Results

The Huskies faced their competition at the Foot today with a fierce, 15-20 mph headwind down a frigid Charles course. The bright sun provided little warmth for the athletes racing on the 2.25-mile course.

The results were strong for the Husky rowers. The Northeastern Novice A 8+ finished third in their race in a time of 16:04.2. Brown won the race in 15:12.7 and Radcliffe was second in 15:28.7. This particular Husky boat has dramatically improved over the season and raced hard and well with Rachel Buff navigating a demanding course and avoiding crashes with ease. "I was very happy with their result," said Coach Paris. "Our goal was to go out hard and leave nothing on the water. We did that today. Now we know who we're going to have to train for during the winter."

The Varsity 4+s had a strong race as well: The Northeastern Varsity 4+ B finished .4 ahead of the A boat in 16:23.1. The A boat's time was 16:23.5. Radcliffe's A boat won the race in 15:50.8, with Brown behind them in 16:05.2 and BU's A boat in 16:18.2.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Foot of the Charles

The Huskies are prepping for their upcoming race this weekend, also their final race of their fall season, the Foot of the Charles. Held annually by one of the Boston schools (Boston University, Northeastern, Harvard, etc.) it is a shortened version of the Head of the Charles course. The course starts at the MIT boathouse in the basin and travel 2.25 miles upstream to end at Havard's Newell Boathouse. The format is slightly different: Coaches put their best varsity athletes in 4+s and the novices row in 8+s.

We'll be racing against Boston College, MIT, Radcliffe, BU, Dartmouth, Brown, URI, UMass and Army. The varsity will look to improve on their 3rd-place finish last year and the novices are looking to be top three at this race with some of the fastest novice crews here: Brown was the 2007 Eastern Sprints Champion in the Novice Eight last year.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Green Monster Results

Dartmouth holds an all-novice/freshman event every year for the local New England D-I teams called the Green Monster. The race is simple--all the novices launch together in the frigid cold of Hanover's early interpretation of November. The row up to the start and mill around above the start line until all the boats are there, and then start en masse to the finish line down the Connecticut River. The top two boats from each program are supposed to be even and the combined fastest time of the winner earns their team a Ben & Jerry's Vermonster. How appropriate.

The NU Novices brought 3 of their 4 Novice 8+s up to the race and did very well. The A boat finished just two seconds behind Radcliffe, which was a great improvement on their last race at the Charles. Dartmouth only entered one boat and won, with Radcliffe and NU close on their heels. The B and C boat finished 12th and 15th, respectively.

The Novice team is looking forward to their final race of the year--along with the Varsity squad--the Foot of the Charles on Nov. 17th.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Home with Mixed Emotions

The Huskies returned home from the Chase in Princeton, New Jersey late Sunday night. The weather there was pretty perfect--warm and sunny, windy but not terribly so. The results were mixed for the Northeastern women: The V8 placed 8th overall in a time of 15:07 and the JV8 was 27th in 16:02. Yale's V8 (the 2007 NCAA Champions) won the race in 14:28. Virginia's A and B boats claimed the second and third spots.

Both boats came off the water feeling positive, having rowed aggressively. The V8's performance wasn't outstanding, but it wasn't a bad result. The JV8, however, underperformed. Both the result, the number and who placed ahead of them was disappointing given their size, fitness and overall potential. They were beat by some crews Northeastern typically has no problem beating: The Columbia JV8, the Cornell JV8, the Princeton C, D and E 8s.

That's the good thing about a sport that's about racing--it's who gets from A to B fastest, with no points for style. You line-up to find out how fast you are, and there we go. That's how fast we were that day.

Next up: The Green Monster, this Saturday, November 3rd--and all-freshman race up at Dartmouth in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Princeton, here we come!

This weekend, the NU women Huskies will travel to Princeton, New Jersey, for the Princeton Chase on Sunday, October 28. They will compete against a slew of their biggest competition--nearly every East Coast heavy-hitter will be there, as well as plenty more: Yale, Brown, Princeton, Dartmouth, Radcliffe, Syracuse, Virginia, Columbia, Wisconsin, Penn, Cornell, Boston College, Rutgers. Virginia was last year's winner in 15:50 over three miles and the Huskies finished 12th after a less-than-stellar performance. The Huskies are bringing two eights: one varsity with the same line-up from the Charles as well as a junior varsity boat stacked with four talented freshman as well as freshman coxswain Rachel Buff at the helm.

This has traditionally not been the Huskies' greatest race, so the main goal for the weekend is to build from their performance from the Charles, not experience their usual sag.

We'll keep you posted!

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Sunday's Results

I apologize for the delay in results--with the HOCR results for the Championship events, we decided to delay the posting due to the penalties that would surely be given out. Northeastern's results in the Champ 8+ went from 7 to 9 to 13 to 12, finally. Officially, the Varsity 8+ (Colleen Saville, Pia Zubrowski, Alida Durrant, Ashley Griffeth, Svenja Sanders, Ashley Bruno, Jillise Ketcham, Anna Padilla, Meredith Sparano) finished 12th out of 39 boats, the 12th fastest college. They had an incredibly aggressive first two miles, which was the goal, but it cost them a bit of poise and technique in the third mile, where they weren't quite as sharp. Coach Joe Wilhelm was pleased with the result, "I was really proud of the Varsity 8+ because they went out there and didn't hold back to pace themselves like they might want to. They were aggressive from the get-go and really went after it. Am I happy about finishing 12th? Not particularly, but I am happy with the race."

The Championship 4+ (Emily Ortez, Emily Fisher, Francie Shafer, Rachel Garabenian, Heather Zeh) finished 19th out of 21 boats. This is an extremely competitive events with some relatively young athletes who clearly have a ways to go to be competitive with their top boat. After the fall, Coach Wilhelm will most likely draw up 3-5 freshman to help deepen the squad, and this race demonstrated that the second tier of athletes needs some more work and some more bodies.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Saturday Results

The first two sets of results are in: the Club 8+ (Rachel Buff, Laura Carroll, Ronnie Townsend, Jen Forbes, Katie Ward, Maria Ciminelli, Delaney Wintermeyer, Liz Biddle, Kailyn Yard) finished 13th out of 51 crews in 17:58, 4.03% of the winning time. The University of Tennessee won the event in 17:16. Northeastern finished ahead of many programs' varsity or junior varsity boats (Boston College, Holy Cross, MIT, Trinity). Coxswain Rachel Buff steered a phenomenal course, demanding (and receiving) an outstanding performance from a purely freshman boat, one of the few freshman boats in the race. They also closed the gap on Yale from the last race, finishing just 25 seconds behind them compared to the minute and a half margin two weeks ago.
The Club 4+ (Jenny Kulakowski, Annaliese Johnsen, Becky Gerstein, Sarah Brand, Lisa Karcich) finished 27 out of 31 in 21:32. This boat was a very inexperienced crew and did a great job keeping their technique together throughout a very long race. While numerically their result seems unimpressive, they had a great race and accomplished the goals they set out to achieve.

More updates tomorrow!

Thursday, October 18, 2007

HOCR Results

For live results, please see http://www.hocr.org//results/results.asp. We will be updating this website as well directly after racing.

HOCR Weekend!

It's Thursday before the Head of the Charles and the Northeastern Women have four boats racing. The Varsity will race in the Championship 4+ and Championship 8+ race on Sunday at 3:17 pm and 4:17 pm, respectively. The freshman will race in the Club 4+ and Club 8+ on Saturday 12:23 pm and 1:12 pm.

What does that mean? The Championships events are open to anyone without restriction, so you'll find Princeton racing against the U.S. National Team 8+ as well as the Romanians and USC. It's a very competitive event with some fantastic racing.

The Club event is slightly less competitive because there are restrictions. If you have placed or won events at certain nationally recognized regattas, you aren't allowed to row in this event, you must row up in the Championship event. Therefore, it's a great place for our freshman crews as they'll be right in the mix (we hope) with some good competition.

The varsity will be gunning to finish higher than last year's 7th place (they were the 5th fastest college). The freshman have a goal as well: be unable to get out of the boat at the end. Both goals require hard racing, guts out. Go Huskies!

HOCR Line-ups:

Championship 8+
Colleen Saville (c)
Pia Zubrowski
Alida Durrant
Ashley Griffeth
Svenja Sanders
Ashley Bruno
Jillise Ketcham
Anna Padilla
Meredith Sparano

Championship 4+
Emily Ortez (c)
Emily Fisher
Francie Shafer
Rachel Garabenian
Heather Zeh

Club 8+
Rachel Buff (c)
Laura Carroll
Ronnie Townsend
Jen Forbes
Katie Ward
Maria Ciminelli
Delaney Wintermeyer
Liz Biddle
Kailyn Yard

Club 4+
Jenny Kulakowski (c)
Annaliese Johnsen
Becky Gerstein
Sarah Brand
Lisa Karcich

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

First Fall Head Race Results

The Huskies are just back from a trip to the Housatonic River in Shelton, Connecticut, also known as Yale University's home course. The regatta was head-race style, each boat competing in their respective events against the clock, racing each other at 15-second interval, to the complete confusion of any spectators.

The results were good at first glance: Northeastern's Varsity 8+ and 1st Novice 8+ finished second behind Yale, while the Varsity A and B 4+s finished 1st and 2nd, respectively. A closer look at the margins (perhaps) tells a different story. NU's V8+ finished 43 seconds behind Yale while the Novices finished 1:23 behind Yale. That being said, a seasoned observer would note that Yale looked a great deal more prepared for head-racing season, charging down the course on both events at a 32-33 stroke rating, far higher than their competition. How they do it?--a fact that still eludes other coaches. Given that information, Yale were the NCAA National Champions last year while Northeastern just missed a NCAA bid, so, in all fairness, they should be smoking.

From a coach's perspective, I was incredibly pleased with the results. We didn't spend time working or doing long pieces at rate, or even talking about how hard to go. We simply have been focusing on teaching, getting 17 athletes to start to gel together, technically and dynamically as a team. We raced at a measly 26 strokes per minute without much aggression (a fact we need to work on), but given where we are and how we prepared, I'm pleased. Besides, we've got nearly 8 months till Eastern Sprints. Lots will change.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Welcome!

This is the first post on this website, soon-to-be the best way to find out anything about the Northeastern Women's Rowing Team.

Who are we? We'll do a little history in between the real information, but for now, here are our stats:

Head Coach: Joe Wilhelm, 10th season
Novice Coach: Miranda Paris, 2nd season
Assistant Varsity Coach and Recruiting Coordinator: Laura Macfarlane, 2nd season

Captains: Colleen Saville, Alida Durrant, Meredith Sparano

Total Team Members: 49

Boathouse: Henderson Boathouse, Charles River, Boston, MA

League: Eastern Sprints

Big Competition: Brown, Yale, Princeton, Ohio State, USC...depends on the year.

Mascot: Huskies