Pulling neck-and-neck with Salisbury rowers over the final 500 meters of Saturday’s race, Andover Crew’s B2 entered a final sprint, pulling with intense force over the last section, described B2 coxswain Logan McLennan ’19. However, Salisbury edged out Andover in the B2 1600-Meter race with a time of 4:34.8 to Andover’s 4:37.4.
McLennan said of the eight-man boat’s final push, “I’ve got to say, it was the greatest sprint I’ve ever seen a boat do in my life, let alone, a boat that I’ve been in, and I was screaming my head off. I was excited, man. Good sprint — we went fast. We worked together.”
The race on Saturday took place on Andover’s home course. Both Salisbury School and Brookline High School brought boats to compete with Andover in windy, cold conditions.
Andover’s B3 took home a victory clocking a 4:37.8 to Brookline’s 4:43.0 and Salisbury’s 5:52.0.
Stroke seat Remus Sottile ’19 said, “The weather played a lot into it. I think Salisbury and Brookline don’t race on courses that are as exposed as ours are, so we’ve practiced on a course that had a lot of worse weather than the course that they’d practiced on, and therefore, when the race came, and the current was really rough, I think we were better able to handle the rough conditions better than Salisbury and Brookline were able to.”
Salisbury is known as one of the most tenacious teams in Andover conference, according to Captain Luke Bitler ’17, and Andover’s narrow loss showcases a strong future for the team.
“Salisbury is one of those teams that is really the cream of the crop. Salisbury won [NEIRAs] last year, and we were only three seconds off of them,” said Bitler.
The B1 crew boat of Andover completed the course in a time of 4:18, while Salisbury clocked a 4:15.
“Something that I really focused on that I think I succeeded in doing was keeping the rating consistent and keeping the rhythm consistent so that, as a boat, we could all get a long stroke, and that the intensity just stayed with us the entire time,” said B1 stroke seat Aidan Driscoll ’17.
B4’s race was again very close. Salisbury finished the race in a time of 4:48.62, while Andover finished in 4:48.82.
Describing what it takes to be a successful rower, Bitler said, “Every day, coming with a focus that you need to work on something and that it’s never okay to be comfortable. If you’re comfortable, then you’re making negative progress. You always have to be willing to change, willing to adapt to new boats. It’s all different moving parts. It will never be the same every day, and you just need to come in with that mindset and be willing to adapt, and then, by doing that, you can do a better job at applying power.”
This weekend, after the first week of warm-weather practice, Andover will face Kent.
McLennan said, “We held a pretty good race here. A lot of our boats won, and it pretty much just shows to Kent, we’re coming, so be ready. Kent’s always a fun race. They’re a good rival.”
