DSCN0774 Ricky Bobby once said, “If you’re not first you’re last.” Last weekend, the Jesuit crew team took this quote to heart after traveling up to Oklahoma City for the OKC Crew Invitational, marking the first of many major events the Rangers will compete in over the 2016 school year. Teams from all across the country competed in this vigorous event, and amongst them all, Jesuit finished first in the varsity 8, first in the lightweight 8, first in the varsity 4, first in the JV 4, and first in the novice 4. Not to mention, they achieved second place in the 2nd varsity 8, novice a 8 and novice b 8.

Henry Droese ’17 commented, “After this weekend, I think we have an even better gauge of the speed of other crews in our region and know what we need to improve in order to improve our boat speed in the next race.” Droese later went on to say that, “The OKC Invitational left us with multiple viewpoints on the weekend, and even though we saw various amounts of success across the entire team. Various changes need to be made going into the next regatta in order to ensure more desirable results.”

Attributing their success to their coach Michael Hornung ’18 said, “Coach has been persistent with us all year to train DSCN0780harder and harder in order to reach our goal. This definitely is a good confidence boost as we head into to the better parts of our season, but I think we still need to keep up the good work. Practicing hard is always vital to our team’s success, and we have drastically improved from last year.”

This competition left Jesuit leaving with high hopes, and the school will continue to rally behind our Jesuit Rangers in hopes of achieving the same results in further competitions throughout the year.