Photo by: Anna Leach
Callie at the Catch: Season Preview
September 14, 2017 | Women's Rowing
Excitement abounds at Porter Boathouse as new season begins
Whitewater, Wisconsin, native Callie Herbert is back and giving regular updates again this year from Porter Boathouse and wherever else rowing takes her and her teammates. A four-time swimming state qualifier in high school, the senior stroked the varsity eight to 11th-place at the 2017 NCAA Championships.
MADISON, Wis. -- Welcome back! Not only did we begin another school year at the best university in the country, we also officially started our 2017-18 season.
What is even more exciting about another season is that the novice team last year is now on the varsity team and we get to bring in an entire new class of freshmen in. This year we have a handful of recruits who have been waiting to come here as well as many walk-ons trying this sport for the first time and our walk-on program here at Wisconsin is the best in the country.
So, you could say there is a lot of excitement in the boathouse right now.
Collegiate rowing is an interesting sport because we have two racing seasons, fall and spring, which are quite different from each other. Spring is our championship season where we race down a straight 2,000-meter course in lanes and compete at Big Tens and NCAA championships. The fall season, however, we race less but race much longer pieces that are usually around 5-6,000 meters along a curvy river. These types of races are run head-race style. This means that the official will send off a boat every 10 seconds with the fastest boat starting last. The goal is to not get passed but to pass other boats giving you the fastest time. This can be a lot of fun as it is up to the coxswain to fire us up to pass a boat because we cannot see them.
Training in the fall is also different than spring training. We tend to practice in many different sized boats like a single, which is one person with two oars called a sculling boat, and a pair, which is a two-person boat with each person having one oar. We also practice in fours and eights.
The benefit of the smaller boats is to get as many meters and strokes in every day, row with many people, as well as being able to move a boat that is not as stable as an eight. This will make us better and faster come time for spring racing.
In addition to rowing, we do still get some erg time indoors. We have multiple 6k tests and 30-minute tests on the erg as well as a team standard for varsity. These are an opportunity to show how much faster and stronger we get throughout the fall.
We have all waited for this time to come, another season to get back to racing with each other and for each other. Our first fall race comes up fast, this Saturday at the Milwaukee River Challenge!
MADISON, Wis. -- Welcome back! Not only did we begin another school year at the best university in the country, we also officially started our 2017-18 season.
What is even more exciting about another season is that the novice team last year is now on the varsity team and we get to bring in an entire new class of freshmen in. This year we have a handful of recruits who have been waiting to come here as well as many walk-ons trying this sport for the first time and our walk-on program here at Wisconsin is the best in the country.
So, you could say there is a lot of excitement in the boathouse right now.
Collegiate rowing is an interesting sport because we have two racing seasons, fall and spring, which are quite different from each other. Spring is our championship season where we race down a straight 2,000-meter course in lanes and compete at Big Tens and NCAA championships. The fall season, however, we race less but race much longer pieces that are usually around 5-6,000 meters along a curvy river. These types of races are run head-race style. This means that the official will send off a boat every 10 seconds with the fastest boat starting last. The goal is to not get passed but to pass other boats giving you the fastest time. This can be a lot of fun as it is up to the coxswain to fire us up to pass a boat because we cannot see them.
Training in the fall is also different than spring training. We tend to practice in many different sized boats like a single, which is one person with two oars called a sculling boat, and a pair, which is a two-person boat with each person having one oar. We also practice in fours and eights.
The benefit of the smaller boats is to get as many meters and strokes in every day, row with many people, as well as being able to move a boat that is not as stable as an eight. This will make us better and faster come time for spring racing.
In addition to rowing, we do still get some erg time indoors. We have multiple 6k tests and 30-minute tests on the erg as well as a team standard for varsity. These are an opportunity to show how much faster and stronger we get throughout the fall.
We have all waited for this time to come, another season to get back to racing with each other and for each other. Our first fall race comes up fast, this Saturday at the Milwaukee River Challenge!
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