NAC Varsity Practice 1-6-11 and Update

We're back in the swing of things at practice and preparing for our first of many encounters with Marina Aquatic Center.  They will be traveling down to Newport on Sunday, January 23rd and we are looking forward to seeing some very competitive racing early on in our race schedule.  The distance and amount of the pieces has yet to be decided but I will update as soon as we figure it out.  Also a time and place to view the scrimmage from will be listed.  Posted is a short video from practice on the January 6th:

Winter Break

We finished off the Fall season just how we started it... with an erg test.  We will now be taking advantage of the next two weeks filling up our erg cards.  Small gains in fitness can be made over break with some diligent work.  In the same 2 week period, if wasted, we can lose an entire Fall season of work and jeopardize our Spring season.  Seriously.

Happy training and I will see you all at the boathouse during break.

Athletes completing their last 6K of the Fall before break.

A few Videos From December 9th

2010 Erg-a-thon

I would like to thank all the parents who helped and volunteered their time to make this year's erg-a-thon one of the most successful of all time.  The kids participation and excitement also really added to the energy in the room and from what I was told, everything went off without a hitch (Thanks for the chocolate chip pancakes!).

Posted below are the heats, semi-finals, grand final and a couple of exhibition races:


(Link will be available as soon as the results are posted on the website)

First Place Finishers

Second Place Finishers

Third Place Finishers

6:15am

Hi, I'm Heather.

*&#*&$&

Droves of rowers await their turn to spin the wheel.

Long Beach Christmas Regatta

A quick post about the Long Beach Christmas Regatta!  The Christmas Regatta is an 800m race held in Long Beach and is usually seen as a final farewell to the Fall race season.  Traditionally we send the Varsity up to race small boats and the Novices to race the 8+'s.  This year just for the heck of it I entered 3 Varsity quads even though half of the guys had never sculled before and the other half have about 1-2 hours of experience.  As you can see in the results for the quads, we need some work...

Event # 2A - MJR1x
Nico Beyrooty finished in 3rd 4.9 seconds behind the first place finisher

Event # 15 - MJR2-
NAC 2- finished in 2nd with a time of 3:07.9 (6.8 seconds behind the first place finisher LBJC)

Event # 29A - MJR4x ("A" Event)
NAC "A" finished 5th with a time of 2:54.4 (13.1 seconds behind the first place finisher LBJC)

Event # 29B - MJR4x ("B" Event)
NAC "B" finished 4th with a time of 3:09.3 (10.3 seconds behind the first place finisher LBJC)
NAC "C" finished 5th with a time of 3:10.1 (11.1 seconds behind the first place finisher LBJC)

Event # 40A - MJR4+ ("A" Event)
NAC "A" finished 1st with a time of 2:44.3 (7.4 seconds ahead of the second place finisher LBJC)

Event # 40B - MJR4+ ("B" Event)
NAC "B" finished 1st with a time of 2:49.5 (3.4 seconds ahead of the second place finisher LBJC)
NAC "C" finished 4th with a time of 2:59.0 (9.5 seconds behind of the first place finisher NAC)

Newport Sprints

On Saturday we were given the opportunity to race "up" against a few Collegiate crews in Newport Beach, CA.  We were invited to the Newport Sprints hosted by Orange Coast College and attended by U.C. Irvine, The University of Southern California, Loyola Marymount, and U.C. Los Angeles.  Saturday also happened to be a High School testing day and we had to make the best line-ups possible while missing many of our key senior members.

Our 2nd Varsity 8 lined up against OCC (mixed Varsity 8+), Loyola Marymount (Varsity 8+), UCI (2nd Varsity 8+) and one of our own NAC Novice boats.  The race ended after all crews completed the 3,000 meter course with OCC winning over UCI, LMU, NAC (2nd Varsity 8+) and NAC (Novices) in that order.

The final race of the day allowed our mixed Varsity 8+ to compete against the Varsity rowers of collegiate programs.  All boats took off the line and settled into their race pace.  Most of the crews based their race in the range of 32-35spm.  Our mixed NAC 8+ started down to most of the boats for the first 1,000m and once they got inside of the protected channel really began to hit their stride.  With 1,500m meters to go we began to push back the OCC Novice "A" 8+ along with the another OCC boat and USC.  By 1,000m to go we worked through UCLA's Varsity 8+ and began to walk away trying to chase down a very quick mixed OCC boat and UCI boat.  By the time we hit the finish line we had closed the gap to OCC but were out of reach of a very quick UCI boat.  From my vantage point I could not tell who had finished with the lead between OCC and NAC but my rowers claimed to have finished up by a seat.  While I did not see the actual finish line and no times are posted, regardless of the final result I was more than happy with the fight the boys put up all the way to the line.

Overall it was a great day of racing and we were all thankful for the opportunity to get to race against some very talented crews.  We wish them the best of luck as we all head into our Winter training routine and take some time off the water for break.  The following day we traveled to Long Beach, CA to race at the Long Beach Christmas Regatta.  Look for a post with pictures and video soon.

Below is a video of the Newport Sprints taken from the Orange Coast College boathouse.

Head of the Lagoon

Our final big trip of the Fall has finally come and gone with some very positive results.  We have been talking, as a team, a lot about "indicators" as to what our goals are, where we are compared to previous years and where we are compared to other teams this year.  As a young group we are getting progressively better each and every day and when compared to other programs, we have the most significant ability to increase our speed this year given our learning curve.  This will continually be our mission as we build our entire Varsity program on 25 novices from last year and 5 returning Varsity members.  This weekend served as one of these "indicators" where we were able to race Los Gatos again after having lost to their Varsity "A", "B", and "C" boats at Head of the American.  NAC managed to keep up with Los Gatos and match them at a few levels in the Varsity 4's event.  Our lightweight double also entered into the "open" category as we feel it is important to make our racing schedule as challenging as possible this season.  The double placed second to a River City double but more importantly, beat the times of everyone in the lightweight category by over a minute and a half.

Jr. Lightweight

		MLt2x		Upper Natoma			0:22:36	0:22:36	1	GOLD
		MLt2x		Stanford RC 'A'			0:23:13	0:23:13	3	SILVER
		MLt2x		Norcal Crew 'A' - Martin			0:24:49	0:24:49	4
		MLt2x		Norcal Crew 'B' - Sandhu			0:24:58	0:24:58	5
		MLt2x		Stanford RC 'B'			0:25:25	0:25:25	6
		MLt2x		PARC - Low			0:22:40	0:22:40	7		Did not weigh in
Jr. Open Weight
		MJr2x		RCRC - Green			0:20:02	0:20:02	1	GOLD
		MJr2x		NAC			0:20:53	0:20:53	2	SILVER
		MJr2x		Stanford RC			0:20:59	0:20:59	3
		MJr2x		Pacific RC			0:23:46	0:23:46	4
		MJr2x		North Bay - Burbank			0:24:34	0:24:34	5

Director's Cup (Varsity 4+)

LGRC 'A' - Cullinan

0:19:08

0:19:08

1

GOLD

NAC 'A'

0:19:19

0:19:19

2

SILVER

NAC 'B'

0:19:44

0:19:44

3

BRONZE

LGRC 'B' - DeSantis

0:19:51

0:19:51

4

Pacific RC

0:20:22

0:20:22

5

NAC 'C'

0:20:26

0:20:26

6

LGRC 'C' - Sturm

0:20:29

0:20:29

7

Serra HS 'A' - Jimenez

0:20:41

0:20:41

8

Serra HS 'B' - Patterson

0:22:51

0:22:51

9

Stockton 'B' - Nakave

0:22:58

0:22:58

10

Stockton 'A' - Graham

0:24:34

0:24:34

11

North Bay - Kunzman

0:24:49

0:24:49

12