St Catharine's College Boat Club

Today saw the first on-water race of the novice women's calendar as our two boats of cats from Catz competed in Emma Sprints.

Unconvinced by the apparent importance of race starts in sprint events, the trusty LBCs had taken the executive decision to build from backstops in what can only be described as excellent long-term planning for Fairbairns domination. However it was quickly decided after NW2's first race that short-term Emma Sprints domination would also be quite nice, and the crews adapted well to an unpracticed start from front stops. In NW2's first race, they understandably lost some early ground to a strong-starting Eddy's NW1, but held a really nice, co-ordinated rhythm over the length of the reach and, until thwarted by a broken seat, were reeling them in. In their second race, they had a stronger start and were about level with Downing NW2, then pulled away as Downing caught a crab. We then caught a nasty crab ourselves but excellent coxing by Raunak meant we managed to stop the boat and reset quickly. We had about a length to catch up on Downing with 300m to go and were eating up the water between us and them coming into the last 200m. Then disaster struck as Robyn's footplate at stroke came out, but the girls adapted brilliantly and Katy at 7 kept a strong rhythm going which allowed us to hunt down Downing with just 7 rowers, squeezing past them with about 10m to go to beat them to the line. Incredible scenes.

NW1 prepared for their races with all footplates tightened and tightened again and all seats securely in position. They started well in race 1 and were looking strong against Downing NW1. We would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for that pesky footplate, as unfortunately the stroke footplate once again took on a life of its own and decided it no longer wanted to be involved in the race. The girls powered through well to the end but were unlucky that, this time around, Downing could not be beaten with only 7 rowers. In their second race, Lucy Cav NW1 had a strong start and pulled away early on, but the girls set a strong rhythm, hitting r28 while still maintaining solid technique, and comfortably held them for the remainder of the race.

Today's sprints showed a lot of promise, as the strongest elements of our races were those that will be carried through to Fairbairns: the good timing and chunky rowing once we had settled into our rhythm. Well done to everyone for a fantastic effort with some nice technical rowing and excellent accommodation of the various challenges that were thrown our way!