Every Andover boat cruised past the finish line far ahead of Northfield Mount Hermon (NMH), according to Co-Captain Lila Brady ’18. Since NMH did not have a G4 boat, Andover’s G4 competed in the G3 race. G1, G2, G3, and G4 crossed the finish line in 19.5, 14.4, 25.3, and 3.3 seconds ahead of NMH in their respective races.
Brady said, “We raced NMH this weekend and every boat won, girls and boys. It was a good race for the first boat, and we were really working on our rush and timing with our stroke seat. We are working on the middle of our stroke during this week of practice in order to be best prepared for Neiras this Saturday. The team is so ready and I cannot wait for our championship race. Our coxswain Emelie Eldracher [’18] was really great this race; she’s been perfecting her steering and setting us up well.”
This weekend, G1 was able to get out in front during its high strokes and maintain its speed through the finish, according to Molly Katarincic ’18. G1 translated its deliberate practice throughout the week into Saturday’s race and managed to complete the 1650 meter row in 5:22.8 minutes, despite the increasing headwind during the last 500 meters.
According to Sofia Garcia ’21, G2 has been working on its working on solidifying its moves and its sprint.
Garcia said, “G2 worked on perfecting our race plan, and solidifying our middle moves throughout the race. We really improved on our sprint, and look forward to bringing a lot of aggression and speed from Saturday’s win to Neiras this weekend. It was also a super special race, as it was our last home race of the season, and I’m especially proud of Allegra Stewart ’18, our Senior, as she always brings her passion and power to races and helps us all improve as a whole.”
Katarincic said, “We did a really good job about executing our focuses that we decided upon before the race. We decided that we wanted to be really effective on our high strokes, and we wanted to have a strong sprint and we did both of those things.”
Katarincic continued, “All of the boats swept their races so it was a really good way to end the season for the lower boats, and a really great way to set up the varsity team for the New England championships this season.”
G3 put in its best efforts during the practices leading up to the race, making a switch in the lineup, and focused on technique and endurance, according to Brooklyn Wirt ’21 and Sascha Evans ’21.
Wirt said, “G3 had a little lineup switch and that proved to be effective. Saturday we were really trying to keep our effort and thought high as we went through the race and we were trying to keep all parts of the race high quality to move on from struggles we’ve had before at different times.”
Evans said, “Our boat made a change since we had seat races the week before, and the boat felt so much better, lighter, and faster… [We had the addition of] Cheyn Cole ’19. [This race] was really nice because the day before we got into a rut because we lost all of our pieces to the G4, and after we started down. We know we were supposed to do better, but we all had the mindset to come in the next day and know that we could do well and do that we could pull our hardest, and that we were the boat going to Neiras and that was for a reason.”
G1 will go into the New England Interscholastic Rowing Association Championships this weekend as the number one seed.
