Folks …
After a long hiatus, it is high time to renew the Blue Blog. Perhaps it was the distraction of an additional dog, building a barn, or the funk overwhelming Red Sox Nation … lots of reasons — no excuses. The rowers are back in class and on the Severn and Housatonic … first Fall races for the Blue Crews will be this weekend:
Navy crews will travel to Philadelphia and the Schuylkill River for a 2.5 mile head race challenge in the Navy Day Regatta. Fittingly this event celebrates the 236th birthday of the US Navy [13 October 1775]. http://www.navydayregatta.com/
Yale crews will compete in the 17th Head of the Housatonic over a 2.7 mile course upstream of the Gilder Boat House on their home waters. http://www.headofthehousatonic.org/
Fall schedules for all Blue Crews – HW, LW and Women are included bottom below.
Yale LWs and Coach — EARC crew of the Year.
Folks …
After a long hiatus, it is high time to renew the Blue Blog. Perhaps it was the distraction of an additional dog, building a barn, or the funk overwhelming Red Sox Nation … lots of reasons — no excuses. The rowers are back in class and on the Severn and Housatonic … first Fall races for the Blue Crews will be this weekend:
Navy crews will travel to Philadelphia and the Schuylkill River for a 2.5 mile head race challenge in the Navy Day Regatta. Fittingly this event celebrates the 236th birthday of the US Navy [13 October 1775]. http://www.navydayregatta.com/
Yale crews will compete in the 17th Head of the Housatonic over a 2.7 mile course upstream of the Gilder Boat House on their home waters. http://www.headofthehousatonic.org/
Fall schedules for all Blue Crews – HW, LW and Women are included bottom below.
Yale LWs and Coach — EARC crew of the Year.
On the heels of its IRA Championship winning season, the Yale men’s lightweight crew team has scooped both the Crew of the Year and Coach of the Year awards from the Eastern College Athletic Conference.
In the voting for the award, the Elis’ varsity eight picked up five votes – four more than Yale’s own freshman eight and Dartmouth’s varsity eight, which came in equal second place with one vote apiece.
It was a similar result for head coach Andy Card, who in his 22nd year at the helm of the Bulldogs picked up the IRA Coach of the Year Award. Since taking over as coach, Card has propelled the Bulldogs to five IRA title victories, with this past season’s victory the team’s first since 2005.
Bravo Zulu to Andy Card and the Yale 150s.
We have posted a number of articles below that highlight the prospects for the coming year as well as a number of Yale and Navy rowers who were active over the Summer representing the US in international competition.
Under 23 World Championships, Amsterdam. In his fourth appearance at the international level, Yale heavyweight crew captain and rising senior Tom Dethlefs is finally bringing home gold from a world rowing championship. Dethlefs sat in the six seat of the USA men’s eight that powered through to the finish line in Sunday’s A final to win the gold medal at the 2011 World Rowing Under-23 Championships. Dethlefs’ crew finished in a time of 5:24.31, both a new U23 world record and only 4.46 seconds off the fastest 2k time ever, set by the U.S. men’s eight in the finals of the 2004 Athens Olympics. Dethlefs was one of five Bulldogs competing at this year’s U23 Worlds, and his crew’s gold medal brought the American medal count to four.
Dethlefs was one of three Yale heavyweights competing at U23 Worlds. Rising junior Harry Picone and rising sophomore Owen Symington also raced at Bosbaan, rowing for Australia in a coxed four made up of Australians studying at American universities. Their crew narrowly missed making it out of the Friday’s Repechage, finishing third behind New Zealand by about two seconds. The crew did, however, go on to finish first in Saturday’s B final, clocking in at 6:15.35 ahead of Italy (6:17.60).
Catherine McDermott – Yale ’12 [Cazenovia, NY] competed in the USA 4- in the Under 23 Worlds. McDermott held down the bow seat in the USA boat that finished 5th in the Grand Final. Her comments on off-season training: The off-season? I mean, the thing is it never really feels technically like we have an off-season because we’re always training — we’re always training for the spring. But the fall is, you know, it’s a little bit more chill. We do a lot of smaller boat work, which is really fun. It’s a good time to get the freshmen integrated into the team. So that’s kind of the main thing, I think. And we do have two races. And those are just kind of bigger, fun races, head races.
Midn. 1/C William Race and Midn. 1/C Kyle Browne were invited to try out for the Under-23 National Team in California. The U23 camp, hosted at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, selected the men’s heavyweight eight and straight four that competed in Amsterdam in July. After a few weeks of training and a lot of seat-racing, Will Race was named to the straight four, while Kyle Browne was sent to Penn AC to join a coxed four which raced at the U23 trials. At the trials, Kyle’s four won the initial time trial but placed second in the finals, missing out on an opportunity to compete overseas.
Will Race, in Bow seat, joined rowers from Harvard, Washington and Cornell in the heavyweight straight four. Thirteen countries were in their event at the U23 World Championships and by placing second in both their heat and semi-final, the U.S. four advanced to the grand final for only the second time since 2005. In the final, the U.S. did not get off the line very well and even though they managed to claw their way back into fourth place, they were eventually out-paced to place sixth.
BLED, Slovenia – The 2011 World Rowing Championships Two former Yale heavyweights finishing among the top spots in their respective events. Charlie Cole ’07 [Stroke] finished fourth for the U.S. in the straight four, while Derek Johnson ’11 [Bow] finished sixth in the coxed pair, also for the U.S. Johnson will now return to the USRowing Training Center in Oklahoma City, OK, while Cole’s top-10 finish earns his crew a qualifying spot for the 2012 Olympics in London.
Johnson, Yale’s captain for the 2010-11 season, began racing on the second day of competition. The coxed pair is one of the smaller, non-Olympic events and as such the field was split into just two heats. Johnson’s crew finished in second place in their heat, sending them to the Repechage two days later. The top four finishers in the rep would go on to the A final, and with a third-place finish in a time of 7:04.40 ahead of the crew from Croatia (7:04.41) Johnson and his mates made it through. In Friday’s A final Johnson’s crew finished sixth with a time of 7:07.56 in a race won by the Italians (6:56.45).
In one of the larger fields at the regatta with 22 crews, Cole and his teammates began their bid for a world championship title and a qualifying spot at the Olympics on the first day of competition. The U.S. straight four took second in the third of four heats with a time of 5:50.98. The U.S. sat close behind New Zealand for the first 1500 meters of the race but both boats were sprinted through at the end by the crew from Belarus, who clocked in at 5:50.96. Three days later Cole’s four won the second Repechage over the Italians by a margin of more than two seconds. After another two days the U.S. raced in the second A/B semifinal, finishing less than two seconds behind the British crew that had won gold at the 2011 Samsung World Cup III in Lucerne, Switzerland, in July. With that, the U.S. men’s team’s best hope for a medal was alive and strong heading into Sunday’s finals.
The Americans led the Germans for the better part of the straight four A final, but a three-boat pack of Australia, Great Britain and Greece could not be caught after passing through the 500-meter mark. The British made a big push in the third 500 meters and would go on to take the gold (5:55.18), while Cole and the Americans held off the Germans as they did in Lucerne to finish fourth (6:01.39). By finishing so solidly in the top 10, Cole’s crew earned the U.S. a qualifying spot at next year’s Olympics in the straight four event. But with another year to go until convening in London, it is unclear whether Cole, along with teammates Scott Gault (Piedmont, Calif.), Brett Newlin (Riverton, Wyo.) and Giuseppe Lanzone (Annandale, VA.), will be the lineup that competes in the event.
The 2011 World Rowing Championships is Johnson’s first at the senior level, having only graduated from Yale just three months ago. The regatta is Cole’s third at the senior level, and fourth place is his best result to date having finished fifth in the pair in 2009 and sixth in the eight in 2010.
Jamie Redman ’08 [5 seat], Taylor Ritzel ’10 [4 seat] and the United States eight continued its dominance at the World Rowing Championships. The U.S. eight seized control in the third 500 en route to capturing gold on Lake Bled. It was the second straight gold medal for Redman and Ritzel and the sixth straight for the United States.
The victory completed a dominating summer for the U.S., which had already posted wins at the World Rowing Cup stop in Lucerne, Switzerland, and at the Royal Henley Regatta in England.
“It was absolutely exhilarating, start to finish,” Redman told US Rowing. “I can’t wait to see what we can do in the coming 11 months.”
Redman and Ritzel weren’t the only Bulldogs to medal. Ashley Brzozowicz ’04 [at 6 seat] won a silver in the Canadian eight that finished second.
The U.S. finished in 6:03.65, while Canada crossed the line in 6:04.39.
Redman has considerable experience with U.S. Rowing. She won a gold medal in 2008 with the women’s eight at the World Rowing Under 23 Championships. At the 2009 World Championships, she won a silver medal with the women’s four without coxswain.
Ritzel also is quickly gaining experience with US Rowing. Shortly after graduating Yale she won a gold medal at the 2010 World Rowing Under 23 Championships in Belarus.
Brzozowicz is a veteran with Canadian Rowing. She joined the team full-time in 2006 and has competed in numerous international regattas, including the 2008 Olympics.
Andrew Melander USNA ’05 also trained this Summer with the U.S. National Team after spending five years in the Marine Corps. Melander was captain of the 2005 Navy heavyweight team and was a member of the 2004 crew that won a bronze medal at the Eastern Sprints. After placing third in the pair (2-) at the second National Selection Regatta, he was invited to the Olympic training center in Chula Vista, CA for the World Championship selection camp. Melander was not selected for the 8+ and later by a close margin failed to qualify for the World Championships in the 2-
Two lightweight USNA alumni trained with the lightweight national team this summer. Jimmy Sopko ‘05, who recently left the Navy surface community, has been training with the national team for the past two years. Ed “Mix” King ‘11 was just commissioned as an Ensign and was able to delay his entrance to BUD/S so he can compete for a spot at this year’s world championships. After both were knocked out of selection for the lightweight straight four in Oklahoma City, they were invited to the lightweight eight selection camp in Hanover, NH. Sopko made the boat at#7, this will be his third consecutive year racing in the lightweight eight at the World Championships. In 2009, Sopko’s boat won the silver medal losing to perennial lightweight power Italy. Sopko was a member of Navy’s 2004 IRA-winning Lightweight crew. King also rowed in the 8+ at #5. A two-time national team member, racing in the Under-23 lightweight four in 2009 and 2010. Last year, his crew placed third at the regatta, earning the first medal ever in that event for the United States. King, who was just commissioned in May, has been selected for the SEAL community. In the lightweight men’s eight, the USA entry raced in the final against Italy, Denmark, France and Australia.
The U.S. finished fifth with a time of 5:51.24. Australia won the gold medal in 5:44.57. In a preliminary exhibition heat the USA led the five crews over the finish line in 5:56.16 only 0.2 seconds ahead of Italy.
World Junior Championships – ETON, England
Incoming Yale freshman Christine Devlin guided the United States women’s eight to a third-place finish at the 2011 World Rowing Junior Championships. Devlin, a coxswain, earned a medal for the second straight year. She led the U.S. to a silver medal in 2010.
Both Germany and Romania had shown strong starts in the race for lanes, so the U.S. crew knew it would need to have a strong middle 1,000 meters to keep in the hunt. Unfortunately, the U.S. dropped four seconds to Romania in the first 500 meters and could never close the gap for the top two spots.
“We knew we’d be down off the start,” Devlin told US Rowing. “We had these moves at the 500 and 1,000 meter marks that we thought we’re going to get it. But, (Germany and Romania) brought their ‘A’ games, and they went above and beyond what I think we could have gone. They rowed their hearts out, and I don’t think we could have gone any harder. So, no disappointment. We put it all out there, and they were just the better crews.”
Romania went hard off the start to establish about a boat-length lead in the first 1,000 meters. They continued to lead through the 1,500-meter mark before Germany sped past, clocking a 6:20.16 to win the gold medal. Romania finished second in a 6:23.66, with the U.S. crossing in third with a time of 6:32.28.
Devlin, recently graduated from Philips Exeter Academy and will join Will Porter’s Bulldog Women.
Interesting facts — lots of tenure among the Blue Crew coaches:
After three decades coaching at Berkeley and Brown and 11 Intercollegiate Rowing Association National Championship titles, Steve Gladstone enters his second year as head coach of Yale’s men’s heavyweight crew.
Rick Clothier begins his 36th season as head coach of Navy Rowing and 39th overall in coaching.
Andy Card enters his 23rd season as coach of the Yale 150s
Will Porter begins his 14th season at the helm of Yale’s Women’s Rowing.
Rob Friedrich, Senior Associate Head Coach, starts his 11th season at Navy, including 7 years leading the USNA LWs.
There are full articles below from Navy Sports, Yale Sports, US Rowing, the Yale Daily News as well as excerpts from the most recent Navy Crew Newsletter. Kudos to Coach Friedrich, editor and publisher, of the newsletter. If you have not yet seen it, go to:
http://www.navycrewcamp.org/NavyCrewNewsletter.pdf
In addition to the usual coaches letters, there is some excellent stuff on rowing history and a good update on the status of the renovation of Hubbard Hall – Navy’s Boat House that is scheduled to be dedicated in May 2012.
The interview with Coach Steve Gladstone is also a recommended read.
You can always find current good stuff at www.row2k.com.
Lots of good reading below. If I have missed anyone on the international teams, speak up — comments and errata welcomed.
Get a comfortable seat, a favorite beverage and enjoy …
Go Blue … Be One With The Boat!
Cheers!
Best Regards,
Coach, TB406 and Poker Face