Our crew has the worst luck ever…
So rowing has been taking up a lot of my time lately, and trying to get all my tut stuff done as well has meant that I haven’t had a whole lot of time to write in here this week. So I plan on doing three entries for the past little bit: one on rowing, one on my tuts, and one on Thanksgiving. So here’s the one on rowing.
Well I already said Monday we found out that Ula couldn’t row so practice got canceled. Tuesday we had practice with Victoria, a girl who is a cox but has only rowed like 3 times. We had to have a novice. So she knows her stuff, but it was hard to adjust because everyone got switched around and we had a little trouble finding our balance. Then we found out that Ray couldn’t cox us in our races because the river was too high for a novice cox, so we had to find a new one, who couldn’t be Victoria since she was already rowing for us.
So Wednesday we had our first race, and this girl from another school coxed us. And she wasn’t very nice, and she didn’t call our start like she was supposed to so we had a really bad start and our balance was pretty bad, but we were still quite a bit ahead of the other team. So we hadn’t even really gotten to our push for the end and this big horn sounds. And the race has to stop. We had a false start before when that happened. This time, apparently a boat from Trinity got pushed out into the river in the middle of the other team’s lane, so our race got claxoned, as it’s called. We went up to the end, turned around, and came back. And we found out we would not have a re-race that day but probably Thursday, unless the other team conceded, which there was a chance of because Matt heard them talking about it. So we were bummed.
They didn’t concede, so we thought we would just have two races Thursday. Then Thursday, we find out our race is at 1:50, which meant I had to run from my lecture to get there. But when I got there, I found out we weren’t racing twice because rather than re-race, they just put all the teams who had their races claxoned into the losers’ bracket, only they didn’t call it that. But that’s what it was. So from there on out, if we lost a race, we would be done, even though it’s double elimination and we would have only lost one race. So we found out we were racing Trinity A, which apparently was the team that messed up our race on Wednesday. They were disqualified, but then the cox went and cried to the officials and got them reinstated, or that’s the story. And we totally won. We thought we were really close, but Tom, our cox for yesterday who is from Regent’s, said we had plenty of room. Emma, who sits behind me caught a crab, but she recovered really quickly, but it almost messed us up. But we still won. We were so excited. And Tom was awesome, much better than the other girl, although I still miss Ray.
So we came back and were all excited. And last night, we found out we would race at 12:30 today and then 3:20 if we won that. So I had to reschedule my tut. And I was going to have to miss my lecture at 11, which I didn’t want, but oh well. So then I go out to meet people and we find out the whole regatta has been canceled. There’s a red flag on the river, which means even experienced rowers aren’t allowed out. So our race is canceled and we won’t row again this term, which is really sad. And we could have done so well. So now I’m bummed, although I did get to go to my lecture, a little late, but I got there. But hopefully I’ll get to row next term. I know there are more than 8 girls who want to row because it’s not just novices anymore, so some of the girls who rowed last year want to row again. But I guess that means we won’t have to worry if someone has to drop out. I really hope I get to row though. I’ll get to practice with the team no matter what. But rowing has really been a good thing for me. It’s made all the academic stuff more bearable.
So that’s it for rowing this term. We’re having a dinner Saturday night, although there’s an MCR Thanksgiving dinner that night too, so I don’t know what to do. I’ll have to decide soon though. But yeah, rowing was fun, even though we did seem to encounter every problem possible. Next term we should be really good though, so maybe we’ll actually get to race and win some more. Yay!!