Dartmouth High!

Dartmouth High School is now in the mix! We were at DHS today doing first of two days of demos on rowing. Got some good responses so far. Let's hope we can get some of these kids involved. There was one kid that was really interested and would even ask for a pass to the bathroom to come back in each of the class periods because he was having so much fun. He better come see me on April 4th or I'll be so sad!!

NBHS Demos!

Sorry for no post yesterday but we were busy! We were wrapping things up at New Bedford High School and I've even got proof! We had 67 sign ups from Voc-Tech, and we got 97 from New Bedford High. Dartmouth High is next! It's looking like we've got lots of interest, but now we have to see who actually shows up on April 4th......

Several of the kids want to row but have other sports so we've got a group coming out in late May after Lacrosse and other sports, and then the track and baseball folks will see us this summer. And wow are those kids fast....

Weekend Work

This weekend was a busy one for us here at NBCR. We had a group of people head up to CRI in Brighton to load up a truck and trailer with all of our equipment and bring it all down to New Bedford. It was quite cold but we had a very efficient group and loaded up 6 boats, all of the riggers, 40 oars, 2 launches and engines, and all the other little things that go along with this stuff.

We headed to New Bedford and assembled the racks, put up the oar racks, and unloaded the entire trailer. It was a cold day but at least it was dry and sunny. The wind was pretty strong though and despite being strapped down to blocks, our 4+ got blown over! So we'll be coming up with a new method for strapping that boat down. Apparently it takes heavier wood....

But no worries - we'll get everything put together and be ready to row on April 4th! We've got some great new recruits on the youth and adult teams and I'm confident we'll have some darn fast crews this spring! Come watch - April 30th will be our home race on the Acushnet River!

Our "boathouse" has arrived!

Yes, it's true. We DO have a boathouse! It's just a lot more portable than most boathouses :) It was delivered today and this season it's twice as long as the one we had in the fall, AND it sits on the grass next to where the dock will go in. Yay spring!!!

"Before" picture, then 2 pictures of our 'boathouse' being 'built', and then "after" picture. :)

Set up is coming along...

We've got the shipping container ordered, we're working with the city about fencing, and we've got plans to get our equipment back from Boston. Things are shaping up well for our April 4th Spring Season kickoff! I'm even getting parents calling me with questions about how to get their son or daughter involved in rowing. Looks like our demo at Voc-Tech is working!!!

Demos!!

Sorry for not posting yesterday - Wisner Murray and I have been busy in the high schools doing demos of our sport to try and recruit kids. It's very tiring but when you see a few kids get excited about rowing, it's worth it. We won't talk about what it's like when a sea of teenagers couldn't care less what you're talking about.... :)

So far I've gone to Our Sisters' School and Nativity Prep on a volunteer basis to introduce rowing to 7th and 8th graders. I've also gone to Friend's Academy to do a demo to 7th and 8th graders. For the high school kids, so far we've done an after-school demo at Bishop Stang, and just completed a 2 day series of demos in each gym class at Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School (Voc). Next up are New Bedford High and Dartmouth High. We're still working on Fairhaven High, particularly since those kids can WALK to practice but so far no luck. We're hoping to have a much bigger team this spring so be sure to come on out and watch some races!

We'll be hosting a home regatta (low key, informal though) on Saturday April 30th. We'll be launching from Popes Island but the race course will be on the upper Acushnet. We're very excited!!!

Another College Night!

Gail and Maura from Rowers Edge are hosting another College Night up at CRI - you're all welcome to join in!!

College Recruiting Night will be held Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 6:30PM

at the Community Rowing (CRI) Boathouse.

Presentations will be made by

Gail Silberstein and Maura Glandorf from Rower's Edge.

Come and learn about the process and ask your questions.

All rowers, coxswains & parents are welcome.

The Harry Parker (CRI) boathouse is located at

20 Nonantum Road, Brighton, MA. (phone 617-779-8267).

Note: For GPS Directions use the following address:

100 Nonantum Road, Watertown, MA 02472.

(CRI is within Boston City limit, but is not recognized by GPS systems as of 2010.)

Racing!

The weather today is such a bittersweet thing. It's great because it's all warm and sunny and gets me excited for the upcoming spring season and warmer weather. The bitter part is that I'm stuck in an office looking out the window yearning for spring!

However, today is a great day for more reasons. One, it's St. Patrick's Day! (the day of my people, being a McGonagle and all) So who can be down on such a fun day, right? But it gets better! I attended a meeting with the EPA, NB HDC, CLE Engineering, and the DEP at The Mayor's Office and we made some real progress. Plans for the dock system that will be put in at Sawyer Street are moving along, and our Popes Island location is in the works as well. On top of all that, the EDC is working with us so that we CAN host a regatta THIS year on the upper Acushnet!! It won't be a 2000 meter race, but we can squeeze in a tight 1000 meter course for masters and not run into the sheet piles that the EPA has in place. Yay for cooperation!!

I'm very excited by the progress I'm seeing and absolutely adore Kristin Decas at the HDC and all of her staff for the efforts they put forth. CLE Engineering has also done an immense amount of work putting together drafts, sketches, site plans, and working on permitting with the HDC. Susan Nilsen and Christine Player have done amazing work and I can't thank them enough!

Groupon Deal on Rose Alley Ale House!

http://www.groupon.com/r/uu517633

Click the link above to go to the Groupon site where you can get 50% off for Rose Alley Ale House! Use it for our Trivia Throwdown nights to feed your whole table!!

Rose Alley Ale House supports us, so why not support them while saving money at the same time, right? Winning!!!!

US Rowing Junior National Team ID Camp

Here is a link to a new channel on YouTube...New Bedford Community Rowing's channel! It's name is NBCRRowing and I'll periodically load up videos. Right now I've got a few from Andrew Pereira's ID camp over the weekend. The videos aren't great as I took them with my phone but it does allow you to see what it's really like riding alongside a crew shell.

http://www.youtube.com/user/NBCRRowing

Junior National Team ID Camp

Yesterday, US Rowing held one of their many Junior National Team ID Camps in Boston. It was hosted by CRI and there are a series of these ID Camps across the country over the course of a few months. In order for the US Junior National Team to be created, they hold these ID Camps all over the country for the coaching staff to evaluate athletes from various programs all over.

Our very own Andrew Pereira attending this ID Camp as part of his quest to make the US Junior National Team. Yes, although Andrew is still a novice and really only has a few months of real rowing experience, he has the potential to make the US Junior National Team. The ID Camp is a one-day event where the athletes meet some of the coaching staff and get a bit of information about the National Team process. The athletes are asked to do a 2k test on the erg, and then there are 2 on-the-water sessions for the coaches to assess their rowing technique.

They had about 17 boys attend the Boston camp and thus had 2 groups on the erg. Andrew was in the second group and it was torture for him to wait. He just wanted to get the 2k out of the way. The fastest kid of the camp was in the first group and pulled a 6:19 or something close to that. Andrew was in the second group and pulled a 6:35. He is capable of a faster time, but he's been struggling with a recurring nerve injury in his side. That being the case, a 6:35 was very impressive. Andrew is the only novice rower to attend the camp and he still finished in the top 5 of all camp attendees. Needless to say, while this was frustrating (and painful) for Andrew, he did very well on this portion of the day.

Next up, it was time to get into boats and row. Remember, Andrew has only had a few months of rowing experience, AND he hasn't been on the water at all this season. Coaches Kevin MacDermott, Boris Kosturic, and Bill Berger took out 2 eights and Andrew was in the 3 seat of the boat riding alongside Kevin's launch. Andrew was very focused and a bit nervous as he's used to being on Port side rather than Starboard side but he did well. Toward the end of the row he started to lose his technique a little bit, but I was surprised at how rough some of the 'experienced' rowers were so Andrew didn't stick out at all.

They came in, had some lunch, and then it was time for the second round of water assessment. Andrew was feeling very tired but isn't one to complain so he was ready for the work. He was put on Port side for the second row and was in the boat riding alongside Boris's launch. (side note - many thanks to the coaching staff for allowing myself and Briana Blood to ride along, which isn't usually allowed). This row was a tough one for Andrew. It was clear that he was still having some discomfort from an earlier fractured tailbone as we watched him continuously squirm around on the seat. For those of you in the know about rowing, our boats don't react well to squirming. He became more and more tired as the row went on and that's when it was easier to tell he was a novice. Still, although he had some issues to work on, Andrew did very well and I believe he impressed the coaches. Coach Kevin was very easy going and coached Andrew quite a bit. Later, Kevin told Andrew that he was very coachable and how great an attribute that was.

Andrew has to wait until the beginning of May to know whether or not he will be invited to either the US Rowing Junior National Team Selection Camp or Development Camp. Selection Camp is where the travel team that will compete at the World Championships in Eton will be chosen. Those that are invited to Selection Camp but do not get selected will comprise the High Performance Group and will travel to Germany to compete. Athletes that the coaches don't feel are in the running to make the Worlds squad but are high level competitors will be invited to the Development Camp which is run out of Pittsburgh, PA. These athletes must be young enough to be able to make Selection Camp next year and thus the goal of the Dev Camp is to cultivate these athletes to improve enough to make Selection.

Now...the hard part. What if Andrew doesn't get invited to Selection or Dev Camp? That's actually not a bad outcome. Andrew still has a lot to learn and there are lots of camps run all over the country. They may not be a part of the National Team system, but there are a lot of great camps available. Penn AC Gold which is run by Pat Rufo, a college teammate of mine from UMass Amherst, and is located in Philly. Rufo has offered NBCR one scholarship for any athlete of my choice that meets the time standards for the club. Additionally, CRI will be running 2 consecutive summer camps that have performed well at Nationals and Canadian Henley in recent years.

It is our hope that Andrew gets an invite to Dev Camp and spends his summer in Pittsburgh, and that we can send another athlete to the Penn AC Gold camp. Beyond that, we hope to have several athletes attend the CRI camp, provided we can assist with the funding. If you would like to help sponsor a top-performing athlete to attend a camp, please get in touch with us via email: carolyn@communityrowing.org

Great job, Andrew and we all wish you luck in getting invited to camp!!

AT&T and Sponsorship

I spoke with Curt Boardman a few weeks ago and he's a manager for a local AT&T store at 450 State Road in North Dartmouth. The company likes to give back to the community and I've just received a phone call that they are going to sponsor a youth rower's spring season fee!! The fee is $500 for all 12 weeks and they've approved $400 but they're going to see if they can cover the entire thing. This is fantastic news!! That's one more family that can get their child involved, or it's a few families that can share the sponsorship!!

You can do the same - sponsor part or all of a youth rower and keep these kids engaged in healthy activities that focus on their futures. Just email me at carolyn@communityrowing.org if you're interested in sponsoring a child! Thank you Curt and AT&T!!!!

Buses

Buses and transportation in general seem to be a big hurdle for a lot of after school programs. We have kids that want to row but have trouble getting to the docks. Peter Durant's program Community Boating (sailing) doesn't have a city bus that goes near their docks. Bernadette Souza at the Boys & Girls Club also said that there aren't buses for some of the schools to get kids to them. I wonder if Dennison Memorial has the same issue down in the south end? The YMCA downtown is close to buses but what about the YWCA and all of the other programs that are running in New Bedford?

Well, today Bill Burns in the Mayor's Office is going to meet with me. Angela Johnston at the NB EDC set it up for me and hopefully Matthew Morrissey (the EDC Director) can join me. I'm hoping we can find some solutions for making it easier for kids to get to these programs and stay off the streets. Wish us luck!

Bishop Stang High School

Today, we were able to go to Bishop Stang High School which is a private Catholic high school on the Dartmouth/New Bedford line. We already have two kids from Stang that rowed with us this fall: Lauren Dufresne and Brad Dupras.

Ryan Sylvia, the Athletic Director at Stang, set us up in the cafeteria for 2 lunch periods so curious kids could ask us questions, grab a flier, and even try the rowing machines. A few gave it a shot, including Ryan and a couple other teachers. None of the girls were interested in trying it, but I think that may have a lot to do with the fact that they were all wearing skirts :)

Only about 5 or 6 kids stayed after school to come to our demo, but the school also had impact testing for all of their athletes so there may have been confusion or conflict. We did get 2 kids sign up and sound really interested in coming out in April. We also had several kids during lunch say that if they didn't make the team they were trying out for, they'd be interested in doing crew instead. So I guess we have to hope that these kids aren't very good at their other sports and get cut! Or....we'll just have to wait until the summer to get them involved. Either way, it was great to get in there and expose the kids to rowing and Ryan Sylvia was a great help. He was also really fast on the erg so I may just try to recruit him!

Trivia Throwdown SUCCESS!!

Last night's Trivia Throwdown was personally my most favorite yet....because my team won!!! I've always been on either the last place team or the second to last place team. Last night was my lucky night!! (or, I had some fantastic teammates... :) ) Thanks to Fletcher Johnson, Vincent Savino, Erynn Jones, and Jen Hickney for being smart teammates AND for donating our first place prize of $100 cold, hard cash back to the club!

I also want to thank Jodi Garie and The Krugers, all of whom were on Larissa McLaughlin's team and gave us a *really* close run for our money. They said they were going to donate the winnings to the club if they had won, and they did donate some money in addition to the $10 entry fee. They were a lot of fun as were all of the teams. We were lucky to have the entire extended Pereira family there, including Andrew, one of our junior rowers. For SOME reason his team name was "Sparkles" and now I have a new nickname for him....muahahahaaaa >: )

Thanks to all involved, NBCR made $225 for the night and I think we all had a great time. Thanks to Andy, the Trivia Guru, and to Rose Alley Ale House for their continued support of our club!!

Friends Academy

Yesterday I had the pleasure of going over to Friends Academy which is a private school in Dartmouth for preschool - 8th grade. I worked with Ann Haggerty, the Athletic Director, and Michael Williams, the PE Teacher. They let me come into their gym classes and show the kids a video and then get them on the ergs. Several of the kids were naturals!! There were 3-4 kids that have some sort of rowing experience, either from a summer camp that they've gone to or because a family member owns an erg and they've used it.

One kid, Walker, is 13 and just about 6 feet tall was pulling 1:33 splits for a couple hundred meters. I don't know how long he can hold that but sheesh I was impressed! There were a few of the girls as well that could kick some butt! Hopefully we'll have some of them come out in April to join the team. They were all great kids and would be good additions to the team!

Thanks to Ann for setting it all up and giving NBCR the opportunity to come into the school!

Experts on Training

Today I had a wonderful meeting with the people that own and run Howland Place Fitness, a local gym. They're a family owned business with a wide range of trainers that specialize in different things. We may be able to set up an alternate location for our ergs at Howland Place for when the weather isn't cooperating and we can't be out on the water. In addition, we may be able to get some professional training assessments from the trainers there. They can help various athletes with any issues they may have whether it's scoliosis, flat feet, or just general lack of flexibility. They will work with our coaches and our training plans to help individual athletes maximize their potential! We're still working out the details and the various options, but I think they could be a great resource for our club and our athletes as we get more and more serious about our health, fitness, and speed in the boats! More information to come, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, I'll see you at Rose Alley Ale House tonight for the Trivia Throwdown!! (Actually, one of the HPF trainers - Jodi Garie - will be there tonight too! Come chat with her.)

TRIVIA NIGHT!!!

That's right, it's that time again. The New Bedford Community Rowing and Rose Alley Ale House's Trivia Throwdown! It's the second Tuesday of every month and so March 8th is the day! 7:00 pm at Rose Alley, bring your teammates and your wits! $10 per person to support the club (thank you!) and vie for one of the top 3 place prizes!!!

See you there :)

The ice is thawing!

Driving up to CRI today I noticed that parts of the Charles River have been thawing - I can actually see water! It's happening on the Acushnet River as well, so you know what that means... we get to row soon!!

We're still working out where we'll be located this spring. We had hopes of getting our docks put in at Sawyer Street for April, but unfortunately the permit process just takes too long. SO - we'll be back at Popes Island until we get the green light for Sawyer Street. But good news! We'll have a different dock system thanks to Kristen Decas, Executive Director of the Harbor Development Commission, and CLE Engineering (Susan Nilsen and Christine Player). There will be a wooden pier with a ramp going down to new dinghy docks and then we'll have our dock sticking off the end of that (similar configuration to what we had before) but the pier and dock will be 5 feet wide - no more over head boat carrying the entire way!

C.A.R.E. Fundraiser this Saturday

C.A.R.E. is a local animal shelter and they are having a fundraiser next Saturday at 7:00 pm at the Wamsutta Club. It's a Comedy Show with some well-known acts from the Boston area. Tickets are $20 at the shelter, or $25 at the door. Who doesn't like to help puppies and kitties?! The shelter needs money to keep running, so if you can, try to help them out. You'll get a fun evening out of it to boot!

Cross your fingers!

Today we meet with the EPA, HDC, EDC, Mayor's Office, etc. about getting some docks put in at the Sawyer Street site. We've run into a few hurdles, but the good news is that everyone involved is on the same side and wants to help get us set up in the new location. However, sometimes there are hurdles that are darn high and we're not all 7 feet tall.... But today could shed a lot of light on different things we're working on, and the brilliant people that will be at the table may have some great ideas that haven't been thought of before. So...cross your fingers that we'll have a great outcome and a new location for April 4th!! :)

March is here!

That means we're one step closer to getting back outside and on the water. I, for one, can't wait! Coming from California, I'm over this whole snow and ice thing. It's pretty for a while but then it's just plain cold. I'm eager for an oar in my hand and sound of water running under my boat. We're going to have tons of programming for new rowers and experienced alike! Check the website as we'll be updating it as we plan the spring season. If any questions, just give a call or shoot an email!

www.newbedfordcommunityrowing.org