On April 29th the freshman crew team once again dominated the competition by winning first place in both events they entered at the State Rowing Championships in Austin, Texas.
After their previous win at the Oklahoma City Invitational, Coach John Fife took his freshmen crew team to Austin to race in an 8+ and 4+ race. The match that took place on Lady Bird Lake in Austin, Texas, is a 1000 meter course that the freshmen tore up, beating the rest of the field in both races.
In the novice 4+ event, Jesuit entered two boats, one stoked by Zac Bishkin, the other by Michael Fonseca. The novice A boat, stroked by Bishkin, was able to finish two seconds before the novice B team, who beat third place by four seconds.
Coach Fife exclaimed, “It was great to see the depth of our novice program displayed in the fours event. The B four was much closer to the A four than we anticipated; those guys rowed a really gutsy race.”
Just one hour later, the freshmen had to prepare for another race- the Novice 8+- with the A boat and B boat again
stroked by Bishkin and Fonseca, respectively. This time, however, both boats faced a daunting new challenge: a 20 mph tailwind.
Coach Fife told his novices, “It’s going to be a challenge to create margins in these conditions,” yet that is exactly what his boats did. The A boat again came in first, beating a novice crew from the Texas Rowing Center by two seconds and the B boat came in third, only seven seconds behind second place.
When asked about the experience at state, freshman Jake Gossett, who raced in the 8+ A boat, had this to say: “There is no better feeling than to see the competition drift back behind us,” and that the entire team intends “to do the same damage” in their next regatta in Oklahoma.
Freshman Alejandro Joglar also weighed in about their performance, saying that they “started the race with a lot of power and speed” and that both boats “showed they are capable of dominating the rest of the spring season.”
The freshman team will now prepare for the aforementioned regatta in Oklahoma City where they will accompany the varsity and junior varsity to the Regional Rowing Championships. On their upcoming regatta and rest of the spring season, Coach Fife asserted that his novice program is “very well prepared both for a successful weekend in OKC for the Central Region Championships as well as for the Stotesbury Cup Regatta a week later. The entire freshman/ novice program has demonstrated a tremendous amount of talent and speed this year which will pay off both this season and next, when they join the junior varsity ranks.”
-Mitch McHugh
