Polls: Men Stay 5th; Women Get a Vote

The new US Rowing Collegiate Poll out today has the SU men's varsity holding the number five spot for the second week in a row. The top five stayed the same, Washington, Cal, Brown, Harvard and Syracuse, while Yale jumped to number six after a close loss to Brown over the weekend.
SU takes on Cornell (#9) and Navy (#14) next in the Goes Trophy race at Annapolis, April 17.

The Orange women again picked up a single vote in the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association/US Rowing poll after a disappointing weekend that saw them trail badly behind Yale and Cornell on Friday before beating Buffalo and coming up just short against Gonzaga on Saturday.
Interestingly, UB picked up ten votes this week and Cornell jumped to just outside the Top 20 with 49 votes. In spite of beating Michigan State, which held onto the #7 ranking, Yale dropped to #4, behind Virginia, Cal and Stanford.

SU's women will be in Philadelphia this weekend taking on Penn (36 votes) and Northeastern (7 votes).

POLLS AND RESULTS COURTESY OF row2k.com

Weekend Racing Schedule - SU Women

The SU Women will be racing Penn and Northeastern in Philly this weekend and will be launching from the canoe club. Below is the weekend race schedule. Come on out for the races!

Schedule:
8am Cox Meeting Upenn Boathouse
9:30am Women's 3V 8+
9:50am Women's Varsity 8+
10:10am Women's 2nd Varsity 8+
10:30am Women's A 4+
10:50am Women's B 4+

SU Women's V8 Takes One of Three

The SU Women raced three times in two days in Ithaca this weekend with the Varsity Eight winning one race and just falling short in another. The Orange took the University of Buffalo by about a length on Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon they fell to Gonzaga by about half a length.

On Friday afternoon the Orange varsity eight finished well behind top-ranked Yale which edged Cornell by about half a length in spite of an accident during the race.

Yale’s athletics website described it this way “Yale’s oars side-swiped a bridge near the 1,000-meter mark forcing stroke Taylor Ritzel to have to stop rowing. The Bulldogs had an open-water lead at the time and still managed to cruise to a 2.5-second victory over second-place Cornell.”

All other Orange boats trailed in their events on Cayuga Lake with the Second Varsity Eight losing a heartbreaker to Gonzaga by one-tenth of a second to end the weekend.

Results courtesy of row2k.com

Yale, Cornell, Syracuse: http://www.row2k.com/results/resultspage.cfm?UID=6755468&cat=1

Syracuse, UB http://www.row2k.com/results/resultspage.cfm?UID=4585754&cat=1

Gonzaga, Syracuse http://www.row2k.com/results/resultspage.cfm?UID=384873&cat=1


Coverage from suathletics.com: http://www.suathletics.com/news/2010/4/3/WROW_0403104803.aspx


SU races again next Saturday, April 10 in Philadelphia for the Orange Cup against Northeastern and Penn.

THE NEW ORANGE OAR IS UP

The April 2010 edition of The Orange Oar is now on line at the SARA web page.
It features race reports on the women’s opener against Boston University and the men’s performance at the San Diego Crew Classic as well as features on adaptive rowing by Tom Darling, Joe Paduda’s first-person take on the C.R.A.S.H. B.s, the Carlson Twins’ Star Spangled singing in the Carrier Dome, as always – Backsplash - news of our alumni that includes plans for a 1970 era reunion this fall, a two-page spread on our spring membership drive and of course a letter from the president. Just click here.

Men Ranked #5 - "That's Nice, But..."


Dave Reischman is driving the launch out onto Onondaga Lake. I’m sitting on his left and it seems as good a time as any to ask the question he knows I have to ask – “What about your varsity being ranked number five in the first US Rowing poll?” He’s tempted to be facetious but Reischman gathers up an answer that sounds standard but that also rings true – because it is.

“Our thought is it’s nice to be recognized for the hard work you put in and I think having a Varsity Eight ranked fifth is truly something our whole program takes pride in,” he tells me. “It’s not going to happen without a JV and a 3V pushing them up. But it was based off one race early in the season and there’s a lot of crews that have yet to race so I imagine there’ll be lots of changes in the polls as we go through racing season.”

It was two races – the qualifying heat at the San Diego Crew Classic the previous Saturday and the Copley Cup final on Sunday when the Orange finished third to Cal (#2) and Brown (#4) but Reischman counts the weekend’s performance as one.

Now on this late Thursday afternoon he has his team in five four-oared shells. The guys who rowed in the eight in San Diego are in straight fours but not divided into stern four and bow four.

Mike Gennaro strokes one, with Chris Lutz, Tyson Bry and Dan Berry

Ryan Patton strokes the other, with Vince Berry, Dan Turner and Mike Dietrich.

“I think the straight four has a little lighter touch to it,” Reischman tells me. “I think sometimes it’s closer in speed to the eight in terms of how you get it moving. The four with is a little sluggish. I think there’s a better transfer in a straight four.”

The bowman steers with his foot.

“I think it’s all the pairs work we do too. If you’re rowing a pair and making it go straight you have to know how to apply power in a manner that makes it go straight.”

It is a gorgeous day – 75 degrees and sunny – with a bit of a cross-wind. Just two weeks ago, the coach notes, his crew had ice on their oars. Ah, Syracuse in spring!

Cornell and Navy at Annapolis are more than two weeks away and the coach has pointed out all along that his lineups are not set in stone. Sure, winning “regular season” races is nice but,”… our focus is on the Sprints and the IRAs and doing whatever we need go do on a daily basis to get ready for that.”

What he is doing today is a workout of an hour or so that will wrap up with four full out four minute pieces at 30 strokes-per-minute – the five boats side-by-side.

I had watched the team arrive on the bus before practice. The walked upstairs into the boathouse serious-faced and nearly silent and came down the same way, carrying out their oars and the shells and launching – all business.

“It’s really serious the second you get hands on,” Dan Berry told me later. “The rest of the time if you take it too serious you get annoyed, burned out – you get mad at each other so we keep it pretty loose except the times we’re on the water and as you can tell it gets pretty heated out there at times.”

Now, after some warm-up pieces at 26 and 28 and 30, the business gets really serious.
With graduate assistant Joe DeLeo and volunteer assistant Tyler Page in a launch on one side and Reischman on the other the shells line up on the Solvay side of Onondaga Lake.

Across the lake on the old IRA course we can see Coach Dave Weiss putting two boats of freshman through their paces.



“Sit ready,” Reischman calls through his old school megaphone. “Paddle.” Three strokes in they go to full power and the two straight fours pull ahead, battling one another. Reischman points out that they’re not carrying the weight of a coxswain.

“Good strong solid rhythm stroke after stroke,” he calls out to them. "Good power! Leg drive! Leg drive! Feel the surge, now. Feel the surge!”

When one boat pulls ahead he challenges the other. “All right Ryan Patton, are you gonna stay with them are you gonna stay with them?” The crew responds.

“Good solid power now! Legs together! One push! One push! Legs and body! Send it! Send it!”

Under 50 strokes to go and the crews battle. “A minute and a half - who’s going to press ahead? Be stubborn now! Be determined! Can you function when the heat’s on?
Here we go, Mike Dietrich. They’ve got a seat on you!”

They fight on until Reischman calls out “paddle.”

He drives over to get DeLeo and Page’s take on the boats closer to them. He switches a couple of oarsmen from shell to shell. “I think we have some talent in the JV,” he tells me. He’s figuring out who’ll be in that eight and whether any of them should move up to the Varsity boat.

The crews turn around facing toward the boat house. And they battle again. And a third time and a fourth. Reischman is into it. He admits to getting a little intense. Nobody complains. And then they are finished for the day.

“Good work guys,” the coach tells them. “Let’s take it home.”

“It looks like you guys are working hard,” I say later to Dan Berry’s twin brother Vince.
“We absolutely are,” he replies. “We just want to focus on getting better and getting progressively faster instead of just kind of settling and saying yeah we’re pretty good now we want to work on getting better.”

“If we settle for what we have now everybody’s going to sneak up on us like we did on some crews last year,” brother Dan adds. “We snuck up on Cornell through the IRA last year after they just spanked us when they were here. So if we settle now there’s no doubt that somebody like BU is gonna come up and bite us…”

The Goes Cup race is 16 days away. The Eastern Sprints – 45. 62 days to the IRA.

Women's Race Schedule This Weekend



Here is the race schedule for the women's racing in Ithaca on Friday, April 2 and Saturday, April 3. Click on the image to the left for full size version. Directions to the boathouse are a little tricky as there is no street address. A map is below and can also be enlarged by double-clicking.

Racing will be against Yale, Cornell, Gonzaga, Buffalo and Michigan State.
The weather for Friday and Saturday is projected to be glorious. Come on out for the races!



Women's victory

The Orange had a great weekend of racing, with the women winning the Kittell Cup. SARA President Tracy Smith was (virtually) there, listening as the Voice of the Orange, John Nicholson, broadcast the race in real time.

Word is Tracy's heart rate hit previously-unattained levels as John described the race and the efforts of SU to pull away from the field...

John and his team at SARA Radio will be working to broadcast as many races as possible; check back here for details.
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Crew Classic video

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Congratulations to the Men's Varsity Eight on their third place in the Grand Final of the Copley Cup at the San Diego Crew Classic. Great competition, with our guys finishing behind Cal and Brown while besting BU, Northeastern, and Stanford

For those who missed the real-time video feed (that includes me), you can watch it again on ESPNU - you'll have to wait till May, but that's plenty of time to set up the TiVo. Here's the schedule:

  • May 6, 7pm EDT
  • May 8, 5am EDT
  • May 12, 5am EDT
  • May 22, 5pm EDT
A great start to the season for the guys, and congratulations to Coach Dave and his staff!

ORANGE MEN THIRD IN COPLEY CUP FINAL




The Syracuse men’s eight took third in the Copley Cup Grand Final at the San Diego Crew Classic this morning, trailing Cal and Brown, and beating BU, Northeastern and Stanford.

Cal in lane one roared off the starting line at 46 strokes-per minute with the other five crews battling to stay in contact. The Golden Bears rowed the whole race at a high pace after settling at 38. As Stanford fell back, the other four crews spent much of the race just about dead even.

Brown took a shot at Cal at one point but could not get back into it and the Golden Bears won by open water in 5:49.50. At one point it appeared that BU had edged ahead of Syracuse but the Orange fought back, putting on a move in the second 1,000 and while they were not able to catch Brown, they did get pretty close. Brown finished in 5:53.63, SU in 5:56.22 and BU in 5:59.36 with Northeastern just behind the Terriers in 6:00.69. Stanford finished in 6:03.85.


Here’s the lineup Head Coach Dave Reischman had put together heading West.

C – Ken Marfilius, Jr., 5’8”, 130, Collingdale, PA
8 – Mike Gennaro, Jr., 6’ 3”, 189, Havertown, PA
7 – Chris Lutz, So., 6’ 5”, 227, Fairless Hills, PA
6 – Dan Turner, Jr., 6’ 3”, 194, Vankleek Hill, Ontario
5 – Vince Berry, Jr., 6’1”, 193, East Lansdowne, PA
4 – Tyson Bry, Sr., 6’4”, 195, Woodstock, VT
3 – Mike Dietrick, So., 6’ 3”, 192, Orchard Park, NY
2 – Ryan Patton, Sr., 6’ 4”, 194, Signal Mountain, TN
B – Dan Berry, Jr., 6’ 2”, 190, East Landowne, PA

SU is now back to practice until April 17 when the full squad will be at Annapolis to take on Navy and Cornell for the Goes Cup. Reischman said before the trip that there will be more seat racing at home before the lineups are set.

ORANGE MEN ADVANCE TO GRAND FINAL

The Orange Men's Varsity Eight finished second in this morning's first heat at the San Diego Crew Classic to advance to the grand final of the Copley Cup tomorrow. California won the heat, blasting off the line in lane one at 44 strokes per minute with SU in lane three fighting to keep in contact and BU between them chasing the Orange. The Golden Bears looked smooth as the held on to the lead and finished with just a bit of open water between their shell and SU's. Syracuse repelled a couple of charges by BU to take second and all three qualified for Sunday's top race.

Cal blistered the 2,000 meters in 5:54.62. SU's time was 5:58.82 and BU's 6:00.97. Temple and UCSD trailed.

The other three crews in the Sunday competition will be Brown, Northeastern and Stanford.
Brown started strong in Saturday's heat two, gave up the lead to Northeastern and then rowed through the Huskies to win in 6:00.10. Northeastern's time was 6:03.19 and Stanford's was 6:06.48.

The Grand Final is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. EDT on Sunday (9:30 Pacific) and can be viewed live at http://crewclassic.org/video/

SU WOMEN REGAIN KITTELL CUP


The SU Women opened the spring season today by winning back the Kittell Cup from Boston University as the Varsity Eight rowed through the Terriers and built a lead of close to two lengths of open water at the finish.

“(Coxswain) Lydia (Wong) said were down on the first stroke you could just feel every single person in the boat saying ‘not today,’ said stroke Natalie Mastracci, the junior from Thorold, Ontario. “We’re not being down today.”

On a beautifully sunny but sub-freezing Saturday morning in Syracuse, BU jumped out by a deck at the start on Onondaga Lake, but that lasted a matter of seconds. Looking smooth and strong in the inside lane, the Orange women blasted their way down the course. By the time the crews passed the boathouse with 500 meters to go, the race had been long been decided.

“They actually did start to move slightly when we were crossing the second 500 and we responded with out own move,” Wong, a senior from San Francisco said.

SU finished the 2,000 meter course in 6:46.66 to win the Kittell Cup for the first time in three years. BU’s time was 6:56.93.



Head Coach Kris Sanford called it a great way to start the season. “…but we will never forget that it’s a long season and we have to build on our speed to be where we want to be by the end of the year.” Where that is, of course, is in the NCAA championship competition.

The opponents get tougher in a hurry, with top-ranked Yale among the competition at Ithaca next weekend.

“We want to go after those big crews,” Mastracci said. “We want be the ones to say Syracuse is here this year and we are going to show people who we are.”

And on this Saturday, what did Wong say to her crew as they powered across the finish line? “YYEEEAAAAHHHHHHH!”

3V (NOVICES) ALSO WINS; BU TAKES 2V8 AND VARSITY FOURS RACES

The opening race of the day also went to SU. Officially it was the third varsity race but it turns out both crews were made up of novices. “Our league – the Eastern Sprints league was the first in the country to pretty much get rid of novice rowing, “ Sanford explained. “So there is no more novice rowing. We did that because the NCAA does not recognize novice rowing and it gives a lot more flexibility to coaches.”

SU took the lead in that one and rowed on to win by a couple of lengths of open water in 7:14.00. BU finished in 7:23.33

The Terriers won the second varsity race by just over a length and won the varsity four and second varsity four races easily.

San Diego Crew Classic Preview


From Coach Dave Reischman:

It hardly seems possible but we start our racing season this weekend as we send a Varsity Eight out to the San Diego Crew Classic. You can get more information on the race, including the schedule of events, at: www.crewclassic.org.


You can also catch live feeds of the racing at http://crewclassic.org/video/


This is a week early for the Crew Classic this year due to Easter being the first weekend in April. The key for us is to keep in mind that we are still a long way from the Sprints and the IRA where we want to have our best boat speed. With an early race like this we have to resist the temptation to ramp things up too much too early. Particularly since the Goes Trophy isn’t for another 4 weeks yet. Having said that, I suspect the guys will be ready to go. We had a very productive spring break in Columbia, South Carolina this past week. Unusual for us, we were able to get in 6 rows in Syracuse before heading south so we were able to get to work right away. A quick afternoon row to check the rig on the first day and the start of competitive pieces and trying to figure out a line up for San Diego on the second. I am not a big fan of setting line ups early—I prefer to keep the competition boiling as long as I can. And, fortunately, I have a group that allows us to get quality work in no matter which of our 21 athletes are in the boats. By the end of the week, we were able to put together something that approximates a varsity line up for a couple of practices. When we get back from San Diego we will continue our seat racing ladder and try to have line ups solidified for the Goes Trophy.


Currently the varsity eight looks like this:


B – Dan Berry, Jr., 6’ 2”, 190, East Landowne, PA

2 – Ryan Patton, Sr., 6’ 4”, 194, Signal Mountain, TN

3 – Mike Dietrick, So., 6’ 3”, 192, Orchard Park, NY

4 – Tyson Bry, Sr., 6’4”, 195, Woodstock, VT

5 – Vince Berry, Jr., 6’1”, 193, East Lansdowne, PA

6 – Dan Turner, Jr., 6’ 3”, 194, Vankleek Hill, Ontario

7 – Chris Lutz, So., 6’ 5”, 227, Fairless Hills, PA

8 – Mike Gennaro, Jr., 6’ 3”, 189, Havertown, PA

C – Ken Marfilius, Jr., 5’8”, 130, Collingdale, PA


If you plan on attending the Crew Classic please stop by the boat area and say hello.

Spring Break Update from Senior Tyson Bry



Its spring training in Columbia, South Carolina, it feels like we never left. We quickly settled into the usual routine of double practices, technique rows worked in with seat racing and pieces, the Waffle House and Hudson’s Barbeque filling our stomachs and the anticipation of the upcoming racing season to drive us. Although the routine is the same, things have changed. With another year of experience under our belts we are excited to line up against some of the best crews in the country and put our training to work.

Coach has been focusing on increasing our power per stroke down the race course. This made for some challenging and painful times during winter training but its time for that training to pay off. After a number of days of seat racing and working out some line ups, the V8 and Frosh lined up against Bucknell’s V8, 2V, and Frosh on Thursday morning for some four minute pieces. The first piece was open cadence off of the start. The V8 pushed out early, going bow to stern with Bucknell’s V8 after the first minute and continuing to push the margin throughout the piece. The Frosh eight showed promise finishing about dead even with Bucknell’s V8 and 2V.

It has been a focus of our team to use the added power to get off the line this year and this was our first shot at it. In past years, our focus has been to stick a strong “Syracuse” rhythm through the middle 1000 meters combined that with an explosive start and we are in good shape. At this point it is safe to say the training trip has been a good one, with no stolen shoes or motors (New Orleans), all crews have made some good progress. We still have a lot of work to do in refining our technique and of course, adding more power. We are all looking forward to finish our time here on the muddy waters of the Broad River and getting back up to Syracuse to mix it up this spring. RYBO.

Listen to the Races - SATURDAY, MARCH 27

Saturday, March 27, the SU Women will open the season at home against Boston University in a race for the Kittell Cup.

Can't make it to Onondaga? Listen to the races, in their entirety via phone or online!

To listen to broadcasts over the phone, dial (309) 946-5300 and enter passcode 195587 (followed by the # key) at the prompt. When asked to record your name for the "conference," simply press the # key again to bypass the recording and immediately enter the broadcast."

To listen online:
http://secure.stretchinternet.com/demo/games.php?user=syracuse&o=cal_stamp&sd=today

A full schedule of the races will be available soon and will be posted to this website.