On March 21, Jesuit Crew participated in its first regatta of the spring season, the OKC Junior Invitational in Oklahoma City. The race took place on the familiar course of the Oklahoma River, which the team had previously competed in at the beginning of this school year as the first regatta of its fall season. Fortunately, the Rangers performed very successfully bringing home first in multiple events including the Men’s JV 8, Men’s Novice 8, Men’s Novice B 4, and the Men’s Lightweight 8.
Nearly every Jesuit rower competed at this regatta. Jesuit entered multiple events, including the Men’s Varsity 8, Men’s JV 8, Men’s Novice A 8, and many other competitions.
The team’s head coach John Fife described his expectations for the regatta, saying, “Going into the Regatta, my expectations were for everyone to perform at their speed and ability and really push themselves and each other to make each respective boat go as fast as possible.” He later explained that he felt the rowers met the expectations he had set prior to the regatta.
Fortunately, both the JV and the freshmen rowers dominated this regatta, taking first place in all the events they competed in.
Fife later described how proud he was of those who competed and proved to be victorious in their races, stating “Overall, I was very pleased with the performance. I was very happy with the freshmen 8, JV 8, and Lightweight 8 who all pulled out big victories.” The Freshman 8 won its race by 2.2 seconds at a time of 6:54.3, while the Jv won by 4.7 seconds and at a time of 6:28.4, and the Lightweight 8 won its race by an astounding 9.3 seconds coming in at a total time of 6:25.5.
The Varsity 8 did not win its race and came in third place and were beaten by St. Louis (1st) and OKC (2nd). Fife stated his belief that there were mistakes made in this lineup, and the performance of this boat resulted in this, even though he hopes to have fixed these mistakes in time for upcoming regattas. “Although we made mistakes, I think we are going to learn from them as well as look at some personnel switches to try to gain some speed for our races in April and May.”
Fife spoke highly of the performance of the rowers in the regatta, saying, “I think overall our guys met expectations.” In addition, he challenged them to keep striving to become better , “Jesuit rowers always know the bar is high and we are trying to reach new levels of speed all the time.”
Overall, the team performed well in this regatta and demonstrated great potential for bigger regattas the team will compete in later this season. Fife challenged the team to strive to become better but did show content with the rowers’ performance at OKC, but ended by verbalizing his intentions for later this season: “So even when we win, we never settle or get complacent. There’s always another team out there working harder or trying to beat us, so we take our wins with humility and get ready for the next opportunity to race. Overall, we are pleased and excited at our early speed and depth, but always trying to get better.”
After great success at the first spring regatta, the Jesuit crew team looks to improve and continue to become better in preparation for its next regatta at the Route 66/ Catoosa regatta on April 11th in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
