Sorry, I Just NARFed

The past two weeks have been full of, for lack of a better word... stuff.  Preparing the team to race at NARF following a weekend in Sacramento (Head of the American) has been a very busy period.  Not only is NARF a fairly large race, we are also in charge of the set-up and breakdown of the entire event.  I can honestly say I am very happy with all of the work everyone dedicated to hosting NARF and aside from a few small setbacks and complications, everything went off better than any previous race in the past.  The boys field was very competitive with conference heavyweights Marin, Long Beach and Marina making the trip down.  Results for the Varsity 8+ listed below:


A 3rd place finish by NAC "A": 14:08.96 (18 Seconds off of first place finisher Marin: 13:50.47)
A 9th place finish by NAC "B": 14:45.15
A 14th place finish by NAC "C": 15:15.13

Marin had a very strong showing in this race putting two even Varsity boats into first and second place and look to set the standard for the year in both the heavy 8+ and the light 8+.  We will be setting our goals for the season to close the gap every day as we push forward into the the late Fall and early Winter.

Similar Results in the Varsity four where we placed second in a time of 16:37.89 to Marin's four (15:59.25).

Nico Beyrooty, our lightweight single sculler, closed the gap on the Long Beach sculler and lost by 10 seconds (one week prior Nico lost by about a minute at Head of the American).

Head of the American 2010

Over the weekend the Boy's and Girl's Varsity programs traveled to Sacramento to participate in the 2010 Head of the American at Lake Natoma (also the site where our State Championships are held).  The team had to rise early to make the 7 hour trip up the 5 freeway and from about 5:30am - 8:30am the rowers drifted back into a peaceful coma.  A few bad jokes, millions of questions and a couple pit stops later we arrived in Sacramento and set up camp.  The day finished with only a few minor problems and the athletes made their first day of travel relatively successful. 

Saturday brought new challenges logistically as well as on the water with the competition.  Most of the faster crew we will be racing in the Spring were in attendance and we were able to get an early season indicator as to how our training has been going.  Below are the results followed by a short video.  We are looking forward to next week when we are able to host NARF on our home turf!  See you Sunday.

Men's High School 1X (Event 21, 10:30am) - Fielded 9 rowers
Nico Beyrooty placed 3rd  with a time of 21:03.27


Men's High School 8+ (Event 28, 11:15am) - Fielded 28 crews
Newport A(G.Box, T.Russell, N.Zusman,A.Meginnis, R.Taitz, W.Kingsland,C.Johnson, C.Geeher, [M.Delahanty]) placed 2nd with a time of 16:10.97

Newport B (C.Roossin, P.Voegt, C.Kelley, N.Bryant, J.Gentry, J.Bandaruk, T.Zimmerman, A.Tintcheve, [S. Zomaya]) placed 7th with a time of 16:47.03

Newport C Newport C (T.Thagard, C.O'Grady, B.Metzger, B.Johnson, J.Groneidyke, J.Flanigan, A.Kamegawa, J.Boon-Hah, [M. Quackenbush]) placed 14th with a time of 17:21.17

Men's Lightweight 8+ (Event 48, 1:15pm) - Fielded 3 crews
Newport (C.Roossin, C.Johnson, N.Zusman, P.Voegt, B.Johnson, A.Kamegawa, T.Zimmerman, J.Groneidyke, [S.Zomaya]) placed 2nd with a time of 14:43.00

Men's High School 2x (Event 50, 1:30) - Fielded 8 crews
Newport (N.Beyrooty, A.Tintcheve) finished 1st with a time of 19:28.35

Men's High School 4+ (Event 57, 2:15pm) - Fielded 20 crews
Newport A(G.Box, T.Russell, R.Taitz, C.Geehr, [M.Delahanty]) placed 2nd with a time of 18:19.44

Newport B(J.Gentry, A.Meginnis, C.Kelley, W.Kingsland, [C.Rogers]) placed 4th with a time of 19:02.96

NAC Varsity 10-28-10

2 Weeks...

October marks the mid-way point of our Fall rowing season and things have been going well thus far.  The Boy's program is in full swing (ha?) and we are gearing up for our first competitive race of the season on October 30th at Lake Natoma.  The entire Varsity program, boys and girls, will travel to Sacramento and race at the Head of the American against some of the top teams in the Southwest region.  This will be the first look at the competition and provide a useful indicator of how training has been progressing.  Attached is a video from our first day in small boats where to took out Fours, doubles and singles.

NAC Varsity Practice 10-5-10

Today we had our first 6k evaluation and things seem to be going well.  The piece was rate capped at 22spm for 2k, 24spm for 2k, 26spm for 2k.  All things considered, I was really pleased with the performance and look forward to finishing out the week strong.  I took some video yesterday of our first time rowing by all 8 doing the acceleration drill.

NAC Varsity/Novice Mixed Day 9-21-10

Week 1 Recap

The week began with a great turnout from the bottom up with a large varsity group and a substantially large novice group.  Overall the first week went very well considering both the boy's and girl's teams have to share a bit of equipment and we are thankful for having such a flexible and talented staff (boy's and girl's coaches alike).  The boys and girls hosted the annual "Back to Crew Night" for parents with one slight addition.  We split the nights up having the boy's on Tuesday and the girl's on Thursday to allow for a little more Q&A time after the presentation.  We received a lot of great questions and input from the parents in attendance and we are looking forward to one of our most active and involved group of parents to date.

As far as the amount of work being done at practice, you could consider the workload to be fairly substantial compared to years past.  This is a result of a few factors including but not limited to the oarsmen who have set very high standards for themselves this year.  One of our greatest adversities this year will be for the rowers and myself to overcome our inexperience as a whole and begin to trust the process of building speed in the Fall.  Look for a few pictures and videos to follow in the next couple days.