Bancroft Ascent

Rowing Remembrances from NavyLights Yore
(♫ in the key of crazy eights ♫)

Remember the Bancroft Ascent…?
…Remember them fall season stair sprints in Bancroft Hall
– from main deck to fourth deck? We’d get up at O-dark-thirty, meet at a location in the Fifth Wing at a wide ladder passageway that went from 5-0 to 5-4, commence sprinting from main deck to fourth deck, jogging back down, and then “doin’ it agin!”  I believe we made ten circuits, after which, we’d make it back to our respective companies in order to shower and change just in time to make morning formation. We’d meet as a team at least one time per week in the Fifth Wing and then be on our honor to run those sprints on our own one additional time each week. Youngster ‘75 roomies Bob Blase and Gary Lundeen would get up and run those individual sprints in a Seventh Wing upper class ladder, which had one additional level!

We all most certainly was hard, we was, in them days…!

Editor’s Note: Those from ’73, ’74, and ’75 who rowed lightweights during the 1972-1973 season will remember these early morning sprints – this was possibly the only season these sprints were made; perhaps ’76 Plebes joined us. What say you ’76? Other Classes?