Men’s and women’s rowing uses fall season to prepare for spring

“The fall season is a whole different racing mentality,” said Mike Irwin, head coach of the Saint Joseph’s University  men’s rowing team.“This is about gaining race experience, going to the line, and competing.”

The men’s and women’s rowing teams competed in the Navy Day Regatta on Oct. 14, but the fall season for rowing teams isn’t necessarily about winning and losing.

“Our fall season really is a secondary season,” Irwin said. “We still take it seriously. We train hard and we’re trying to win races, but at the end of the day, whether we win or lose in the fall isn’t necessarily going to mean we win or lose in the spring.”

The spring season is what rowing teams look forward to and what Irwin describes as the championship season.

In the fall, teams typically race on three-mile courses, while spring courses are generally the Olympic distance of 2000 meters. In the spring, boats race side-by-side, while in the fall, boats begin one after the other and are individually timed.

The men’s team competed in three races this fall: the Men’s Open Collegiate 4, the Men’s Open Collegiate 8 and the Men’s Collegiate Freshman.

In the Men’s Open Collegiate 4, St. Joe’s finished in third, fourth and fifth behind two boats from the Naval Academy. The third place boat was the Hawks’ Varsity A boat, consisting of all seniors. The fourth place boat was Varsity B comprised of only juniors, and the fifth place boat was Varsity C comprised of only sophomores.

“The small boats are really sort of training events,” Irwin said. “Sort of extra opportunities to race.”

In the Men’s Open Collegiate 8, which Irwin calls the team’s main event and the primary focus, St. Joe’s finished third, 12th and 18th out of 26 total entries. The Hawk’s Varsity A boat finished only behind a boat from Navy and a boat from Drexel University.

“I think the big thing here is, were we able to put up a competitive time with the people that we race against? And in every event we did,” Irwin said reflecting on the meet. “In that sense, we’re off to a good start, but it was the first of four or five races we’ll have this fall.”

The women’s team took a similar approach in understanding that the weekend wasn’t about winning or losing. The Navy Day Regatta was the first race for the men’s team, but already the third for the women’s team.

“We had a great day,” Gerry Quinlan, head coach of the women’s rowing team,said. “We had a few top 10 finishes. We won one of them.”

In the Women’s Open 2, St. Joe’s had a boat finish both first and second.

Unlike the men’s team, who constructed boats by classes, the women’s team decided to distribute the senior rowers among the boats.

“We try to spread our seniors out among all the boats to help out, to lead the rest of the team down the course,” Quinlan said.

For Quinlan, the fall season is experimental, and more of  opportunity to try various combinations of athletes and boats.

“We’re kind of mixing our boats up a little bit,” Quinlan said. “We’re not really what we would call ‘boated up’ or picked our starting eight yet.”

The team’s focus in the fall exhibition races is to determine who the team’s top athletes are, according to Quinlan. It’s a strategy the team is intent on sticking to, regardless of race results.

 “Win, lose or draw this past weekend, we’re going to mix the boats up no matter what,” Quinlan said. “Put people in different positions, get them out of the comfort zone a little bit and see how they perform.”

The men’s rowing team will be off to the Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston, Ma. on Oct. 22, while the women’s team will next compete at the Head of the Schuylkill on Oct. 28. Because entries are hard to come by at the Head of the Charles Regatta, the Hawks will most likely only be taking one boat.