Beating both Phillips Exeter Academy and Tabor this past Saturday, Andover’s G1 won the race with a time of 5:28.6 compared to times of 5:35.4 and 6:06.1, respectively.
Sofia Garcia ’21, Coxswain of G1, said, “Exeter was an awesome race, because we got to beat our rival, and I think it was our best race of the season. It was executed really well, and all the rowers worked super hard.”
In its race against Hingham on April 27, both G1 and G2 won with times of 4:41.3 and 4:55.4. The race allowed both crews to gain more confidence as well as test out its racing capabilities, according to Alexa Vinton ’22.
Vinton said, “Hingham was a great opportunity for us to start working on our race plan and build up our repertoire of moves. In general, it helped us develop our racing abilities.”
In its race against St. Paul’s on May 4th, G3 came up short with a time of 5:09.5, 0:06.5 seconds behind the winner. According to Hannah Justicz ’22, G3 went in feeling prepared and although it lost, G3 learned what it needed to work on.
Justicz said, “We were all really excited for the race and we had a lot of energy. In our warm-up before the race we felt really confident. We initially went ahead and were neck and neck for a majority of the race but fell behind at the turn. After that we all realized we needed to work the middle section of the race and sprint at the end to not lose momentum.”
Throughout the season, G1 has been focusing on the technique and mental aspect of the sport by training hard in practices and implementing different types of exercises, according to Co-Captain Ina Li ’19.
Li said, “We’ve been focusing on a lot of technical things like our cleaner finishes and catching together because these make a big difference. Also, the mental aspect has been something we worked on. We have been practicing with the guys team which had been really helpful because they are really fast and have helped us learn to continue to push hard even when we are down.”
According to Justicz, the crew of G3 has grown a lot both as a team and as individuals.
“G3 has picked up a lot of speed throughout the season. A few of us are new rowers and we have learned a lot through our peers and awesome coached. It has also been really fun getting to know all the girls on the team and in the boat,” said Justicz.
With NEIRAs, crew’s year end championship, the team hopes to reclaim its achievement from last season and strive to do its best, according to Garcia.
“I look forward to a couple more hard practices in preparation for Neiras but most of all I want us to go in with no regrets. No easy strokes taken a practice, no days we didn’t work our hardest. I want us to go in knowing that we put in everything we could to make the next two races as fast as they can be and go off the water, no matter what place we get, proud of our self,” said Garcia.
Andover Girls Crew will compete at NEIRAs next Saturday.
