2016 Fall Season Recap: Great Strides and a Bright Future

Fall recap 2016

The varsity squad this season brings us two 8’s and a 4 with 4 coxswains. The team is pretty young with the majority of the squad Sophomores and Juniors and only 6 seniors. Although I always have a heavy heart when we have to graduate anyone, the fact that our team is so young makes me optimistic for the future of this program. At the beginning of the year, we sat down as the Varsity squad and discussed what we think makes a good teammate, what our goals are for the year as well as expectations for them and for myself. I left that meeting feeling proud and informed that this squad is attended by so many thoughtful and driven individuals.

We welcomed Craig Doan to the staff this year as our assistant coach. Craig is the Novice primary coach and had to hit the ground at a full on sprint since he moved from Kansas just days before the season began. We were able to get a successful two weeks of recruiting, utilizing the experience Craig has from his time coaching Kansas State University and ended up with a solid three 8’s for racing with 4 coxswains. The novice squad has made a positive impression on us all with their eagerness and compassion for their teammates. They support each other and want to learn and get faster, we are in a great position for the Spring with the men and women we have.

Our student leaders and officers are working on a year of improvements and changes. We have fundraising goals that will need us to add and change fundraising events and the officers have been very receptive and creative coming up with ideas. We have done our usual Chargers volunteering and just went full bore into our letter writing campainge. We hope that in this giving season, our supporters might keep SDSU Men’s Crew in their thoughts of donating to a worthy cause. Something exciting to look for is our notice for a silent auction. We are looking for donations of any kind for this auction held in the Spring and will be sending out more information.

This racing season was fun, the Varsity has shown improvements since last year and we are well on our way to being competitive against our top ACRA rivals come Spring season. A big addition to our training this year has been the new REC field on campus. This along with the new addition of the weight room last Spring, is bringing our professionalism and ease of training up emensly. We are thrilled to have such modern facilities at our fingertips. The erg room continues to be a wonderful facility for us and has made our annual erg duel against friendly rivals WSU a reality. This Fall we were able to do two erg races, conducted over Skype; the first was a 4k as the Novice were not yet ready for a longer race and the second was a full 6k. The 4k saw us slightly under prepared but the 6k our top Novice boat was victorious! Varsity was not included in those races.

Last but not least on the Fall fun was our second annual Class Day Races! During my time coaching at other programs, I always loved class day races. I was inspired when I was at UW when alumni would rent out ferry boats just to watch the classes duke it out. I also loved the addition of adding an alumni race to the mix when I was at WSU. So, last year, it was very important to me to get Class Day going so we could establish a tradition. Next year we plan on an alumni boat, challenging the winners of the Class races. Until then however, the Juniors will remain the victors as they triumphantly beat the Seniors in our grand final last weekend.

So that was Fall 2016, we now head into a long winter break. I ask those who will be spending time with our athletes over the break to remind them to do ALL their workouts, I will be counting on you. All the best from the front line here at Mission Bay to you and yours. Have a safe and wonderful holiday.

Cheers,

Coach Julia Gamache

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