Despite rainy weather which canceled the remainder of races, Boys Crew boats B1 and B2 raced against Salisbury, Boston Latin School (BLS), and Boston College High School (BC High). Andover won both races in its first competition of the season.
According to Sia Gandhi ’24, the races were tight in competition. Andover was able to surmount its competition despite falling to Salisbury last season.
Gandhi said, “It was a little bit close, I’d say for B1 it was four seats, but B2 was one or two seats. But, last year I think Salisbury beat us, but we beat them in all boats except for the girls side. So it was a great turnout.”
According to Wynant Hubbard ’23, who rows in boat B1, there was much anticipation heading into the first race of the season. Looking ahead, the team hopes to build off last year’s success.
“I was a little nervous because it was my first race of the year. But we had a really strong season last year. So I was looking forward to building off the success of last year. So as I was a little nervous, I was mostly excited,” said Hubbard.
According to Gandhi and Hubbard, the team’s intense practice routine payed off on the water. Its current schedule consists of various strength and conditioning aimed to improve both speed and endurance.
Gandhi said, “Every Monday, we do a six-minute row test just to see where the rowers are and how much they’re pulling. Based on that we get the boat arrangements. So that’s usually Mondays, and the other days we usually do short pieces. We had a couple of hard practices, and I think that’s what really pushed us forward and helped us win.”
Hubbard added, “We’ve done like five by two minutes, which is a good way to just get juice. Just get your body ready for like the short race. So doing some of that. We’ve also been doing some longer eight-minute pieces. But that’s mostly what we’ve been doing, a bunch of technique.”
According to Hubbard, the team still needs to focus on working together and building team chemistry. With more cohesion on the boats, the team will be able to race faster.
“It seems like we need to get a lot more together. Everyone has a lot of different strokes and people need is to focus more on like staying loose and staying long. And then just being more unified and together especially when you’re in a race and emotions are getting higher. People kind of let that go. They let the technique and the togetherness go which is like not how you go fast,” Hubbard said.
According to Trevor Moss ’23, who also rows in boat B1, the team must work on its stroke timing as the season progresses.
“In B1, we have to work on our timing together and shifting our rate down after the starting strokes. I needed to make a more drastic change for the shift but with all the tension and excitement, I kept us running a little too high. It came back to bite us as we certainly felt the cost of keeping the higher rate about 3/4ths through the course, but we kept pushing and worked that high rating,” wrote Moss in an email to The Phillipian.
Boys Crew will race against Hingham and Kent on Saturday.
