Sports

Boys Crew Succeeds With Quick Starts and Consistency

Boys Crew has three competing boats on the Varsity team.

As Boys Varsity Crew Boat One (B1) approached the middle 500 meters of the race, Duxbury was closely rowing next to them. B1 pushed past Duxbury with a power ten to successfully move ahead, finishing in first place for Andover.

According to Captain Seamus Dallman ’22, after two races that did not turn out as hoped, the boat was motivated to win this past weekend. Led by its fire to improve, the team flew through the middle of the race.

“We had a scrimmage against Belmont and a race against Kent and those were kind of rough. Those are both fast programs. I think we definitely sort of faced some challenges against those programs and whatnot, so I think what we try to take away from those losses is just to be aggressive off the start and try to keep the intensity high throughout the race. We had a really good middle move around the island… we put some power collectively,” Dallman stated.

Coxswain Chloe Rhee ’24 highlighted the middle portion of the race as well. She explained how up until the moment she called a move, the boat hadn’t been as fast as hoped. However, when she called the middle move, the boat really picked up the pace.

“Pick it up around the middle. There is a start 500, middle 500, [and] last 500. In the middle 500 we were on even footing with one of the other boats, I think it was Duxbury. We were kind of close to each other the entire time. In the middle, they started to pick it up and they were gaining seats on us. I called a middle move to get us ahead and that middle move pushed us ahead for the rest of the race, so they did a good job getting it together,” Rhee said.

According to George Stoody ’24, the beginning of the race was powerful and resulted in an immediate lead. As the race continued, the boat remained consistent and maintained successes.

“We were really great on our starts today. We came out super aggressive with our power five and we took over a length at the very beginning, and then we were able to sustain and hold that lead and make it even larger as the race went on. We came out hungry and we stayed hungry,” said Stoody.

Dallman hopes to clean up the early stages of the race and improve consistency. He believes that consistency is the key to winning races.

“I think we have to refine our start a little bit. The energy is there but we are not the cleanest yet and we can work on just getting more consistency with each stroke. We will have a few good strokes and it will feel good and then fall apart a little bit and then we will pick it back up again. So I just think staying consistent is something we need to work on,” said Dallman.

According to Rhee, the boat’s mindset in this race was to beat themselves more than the other teams. The team wasn’t focused on the other teams’ skills in the boat, and rather to race its own race.

“I think it was just to go fast and try our best. I don’t think we had any expectations for where certain boats were going to be in comparison to us, and if we did we tried to get rid of it. I think the mentality we were emphasizing was that this race is about us and not where we are in relation to anyone else and we should just be pushing as hard as possible,” said Rhee.

Boys Crew will race Hanover and Brunswick on Saturday.