Indiana University Athletics
Rowing Winter Training Trip Journal: Michelle Marchese, Jan. 5
1/6/2007 12:00:00 AM | Women's Rowing
Jan. 6, 2007
With Indiana's rowing team in Tampa, Fla., for its annual winter training trip from Dec. 31-Jan.6, members of the team will be checking in with IUHOOSIERS.com each day to share how the trip is going. Below is freshman Michelle Marchese's account from the road.
After the rain settled in beautiful Tampa, we were able to work on the more technical aspects of rowing. There are many girls on the team who came from high school rowing programs stretching across the country, or novices who have limited experience with the rowing stroke. This becomes a problem for making a boat go fast if there isn't one single movement in which the rowers are rowing. However, do not think that the past few days have just been low-key technical work. We have done many pieces in which the rowers have come off the water dripping in sweat.
I am not a rower, but rather a coxswain on the IU women's rowing team. You may be asking yourself (if you are new to the sport of rowing) what a coxswain actually does. Most people ask me, "So all you do is just sit there and yell `row, row, row,' right?" My answer, while I am making disappointing faces in my head, is always, "Not quite." Then, with a long sigh, I think, "Here we go again," and begin to explain my job. A coxswain is the person that sits in the stern (back) of the boat and motivates, strategizes, and steers her crew down the racecourse. So yes, you could say I say "row" from time to time, but I do much more on top of that. A good coxswain needs to be quick with her decisions, be able to translate to the rowers what the coach is telling the crew into a simpler way of understanding, motivate the crew when it seems to be lagging and find the connection between the technical work and physical strength needed to row efficiently.
As I stated above, my team and I have been working hard on both making our boats fast physically and technically, and it is one of my jobs to make sure each rower in my boats clearly understand what she is supposed to fix in order to make the whole boat better. I feel like I have learned so much more about the rowing stroke on this trip just by constantly working on it every day (and I've been coxing for four and a half years!). In addition, not only am I learning more, but I'm also noticing the rowers have such a motivation to get better themselves. They are consistently talking to the coaches and me after practice about how they can work on their individual stroke. If this motivation keeps up through the rest of winter training and spring season, that motivation will turn into the desire to win, which, with no doubt in my mind, will turn into the actual thing: crossing that finish line first.
