SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Santa Clara women's rowing competed against UC Davis and Saint Mary's in Davis, Calif. on April 12. The Broncos finished third in the Varsity 8, 2nd Varsity 8, and Varsity 4. To see full results, click here.
The Broncos return to the water April 26-27 at the WIRA Championships in Sacramento, Calif.
"The varsity didn't perform up to their level; we all agreed the performance was flat," said Santa Clara head coach John Wojtkiewicz. "We spent the preceding two weeks working on maintaining our focus internally in the boat and our plan was to race our own race and not let the other crews determine how we were going to row. Everything was going well, even through the warm-up, but when the starter said, "GO!" we fell into racing instead of performing. The strokes were frantic, the rhythm was lost, and we spun our wheels for 2000 meters."
Despite not getting the desired results, Santa Clara will use the races as a learning experience and already have plans for how to post better times next time they are in the water.
"I still think we have speed that we weren't able to put out in this race," continued Wojtkiewicz. "As we spend the next two weeks preparing for WIRAs we're going to try out some other lineups, to find that perfect mix of coordinated drive and evenly spaced power. We're going to focus on the rhythm and spacing at rate, and finally sustaining our effort through the second 500 which also showed a bigger drop than expected."
Despite the struggles, Wojtkiewicz was happy with how his youngest boat performed.
"The JV eight had a pretty solid piece," said Wojtkiewicz. "They caught a crab at the 1200 meter mark which knocked down their time by about 15 seconds, but they were able to recover quickly. This was probably the best performance I've seen from this crew to date. Since this crew is so young we will continue to work on sustaining the pressure for the full 2000 meters and rowing cleaner."
Santa Clara Lineups (from coxswain to bow)
V8
Mitchell
Nardoni
Kilmer
Alferness
Peters
Thompson
Brocato
Garcia
Walker
JV8
Boyden
Herr
Bond
Smith
Ross
Van Schravendijk
Goossens
Gill
Bharadwaj
V4
Arellano
Herr
Bond
Van Schravendijk
Goossens
