Browning Addresses Media During Monday News Conference
April 22, 2002 | Women's Rowing
Women's openweight rowing coach Mary Browning addressed the media Monday at a news conference at the Kohl Center. Browning discussed her thoughts on the upcoming championship season, the boathouse, recruiting and her team.
The transcript of the news conference follows.
On the Midwest Championship: 'This weekend we have one of our only [two] home regattas which is the Midwest Championship. It's going to be held on Lake Wingra. It's an all-day championship with men's teams, women 's teams, lightweight teams, all the different categories of events will be held. We're really excited about being here at home because we have such rare chances to row here at Wisconsin. Like Karen [Gallagher], weather plays a big part whether we can get out on the water, especially for racing, so we're really excited about the Midwest Championships. For our team it's a precursor to the Big Ten championships, which will be held the following weekend in East Lansing [Mich.] at Michigan State and this weekend we're going to be seeing Minnesota. Minnesota actually beat us last weekend, our varsity crew by a second and a half, and we're looking to avenge that loss. And I think we will because we had some miscommunications within our varsity boat and we've cleared those up and we'll be ready to perform well. As a whole, our openweight program is doing really well even though our varsity eight is struggling a little bit to be competitive on the highest level. But they're young and they 're learning and we're gaining speed each week, but we do face some challenges. We had some injuries; we've had some people that have had to sit out for a while so we'll see how it goes this weekend. We're really looking forward to start out our championship season, which are the races where we have six boats across instead of just two. We're looking for our championship season to begin with a bang and win.'
On the Big Ten championship: 'There are two different aspects of winning a Big Ten championship. One is the team championship and one is the varsity eight championship. We're probably not going to win a varsity eight championship this year. We do have a better shot at winning a team championship. The University of Michigan is an incredibly strong program and they're pretty much head and shoulders above all the other Big Ten programs right now. We're just looking to set ourselves up at the Big Ten championships for an invite for the NCAAs so again, top three team, top three for the varsity eight is what our goal is.'
How tough is it to get eight rowers in the same boat to do the same thing at the same time' 'It's very challenging and I really shouldn't take credit for saying this, but it's essentially like having nine golfers line up and have them hit the ball all at the same time and have the ball go perfectly straight and go the exact same distance. That's essentially what you 're trying to do with rowing, getting all these people to do the same thing at the same time. So yeah, it's challenging, but that's why we practice so hard and have great kids who really work hard.'
How will the upcoming construction of the new boathouse have an impact on your program' 'We start construction next year. I think it 's going to be incredible for our recruiting. It's really going to help us out. A lot of the schools that we are recruiting against have brand new boathouses because they're brand new programs. So even though we've been around for almost 30 years, some of the newer schools have built these great new boathouses. We 're really looking forward to having that new boathouse. It will make our expectations a lot higher, but at the same time it will help us a lot to achieve those goals of winning Big Ten championships.'
With a new boathouse and higher expectations, would you add more home events' 'It's unrealistic earlier in the year and later in the year tend to be the championship races so the past couple years we've had one or two home races. This year we hosted Iowa and last season we hosted the University of Washington so we do tend to have some races here, but it's very touch and go because of the weather. We have set up race courses pretty much all over Lake Mendota so depending on the direction of the wind, we can go to either the north side of the lake or the east side of the lake to get these races in, so we're hoping to do a little bit more of that.'
How does the Midwest Rowing Championship rank among other championships in terms of competitiveness and tradition' 'In terms of tradition, we think of it as our home race, this is our race. In terms of the overall scheme of competitiveness, it has changed over the years, especially because of the Big Ten championship. All the Big Ten schools used to come to the Midwest Championships, and now we have the Big Tens so we don't have too many Big Ten schools with the exception of occasionally Iowa and Minnesota that will come. So the competitiveness isn't the biggest thing for us, it's the fact that it's a home race, it's our traditional race.'
With the addition of scholarships, how do you approach recruiting ' 'Well, very differently than we have in the past. We have two prongs of recruiting. We still hang on to the traditional form of recruiting where we go to SOAR (UW 's freshman Summer Orientation Advising and Registration program) and we pick people out and we say you look tall, you look like you're an athlete, come row. We still do that and we get a lot of our athletes that way still. But now, with the advent of scholarships and Big Ten rowing and ACC rowing, it's just growing all over the country, and a lot of high school programs are starting to explode. There are more student-athletes available for recruiting, but there are also more schools that they can go to and right now what we're seeing is that there's more scholarships than there are top student-athletes or top prospects. It doesn't always happen for us, but sometimes you see kids getting scholarships who you think wouldn't even make your team in past years. It's very interesting. It's definitely put a lot more pressure on us to perform."
