Torero rowing competes at prestigious race in Boston
Two boats finish top-12 and win requalification for next year’s race
Mari Olson / Sports Editor / The USD Vista
Women’s rowing traveled to Boston, Massachusetts over the weekend to compete in the prestigious Head of the Charles Regatta. The team took two boats, a four-person boat (four), and an eight-person boat (eight), to the race.
The four finished 10th out of 54 teams while the eight finished 11th out of 31 teams.
The Head of the Charles Regatta is the oldest fall season race in the country. Founded in 1965, crews from all over the nation come to Boston on the third weekend in October to race three miles down the Charles River.
Most teams, including USD, bring their own boats to the race. The boats make the journey across the country on a specialized trailer designed to carry rowing shells. When teams are coming from places as far away as San Diego, they will normally combine with other teams to bring one trailer for three or four teams’ boats. USD’s boats were brought to Boston on the trailer from San Diego Rowing Center, who also competed in the race.
Out of a team of close to 40 athletes, only 12 rowers and two coxswains (cox-en) make the trip to Boston. The selection process involves strenuous tests on the water, in the gym, and on stationary rowing machines (ergs) to determine which athletes will move the boats the fastest on race day. The process for this year’s trip to Boston took around a week, which was full of long days on Mission Bay and tough mornings in the erg room at the Sports Center.
The race starts in front of the Boston University boathouse, runs through seven bridges, and finishes just downriver from the Northeastern University boathouse.
In most boats, in addition to the rowers who are pushing the boats down the course, there is someone called a “coxswain.” The coxswain steers the boats through the turns and the bridges, communicates with the coxswains from other teams, and motivates the rowers in their own boat to go as hard and as fast as they can.
The University of San Diego coxswains, seniors Mady Kertin in the eight and Averi Hutton in the four, prepared extensively for the race.
“This course is pretty famous for being tough for coxswains, just with all the different bridges,” Hutton said. “Some of them are pretty narrow and you just have to be very strategic about when you turn, where you have other boats around you, and just doing everything you can to make the shortest distance between you and the finish line.”
In the fall, racing for rowing is much longer than the usual spring races. Instead of rowing just over a mile, the Head of the Charles is three miles long, which the athletes race as fast as they can.
Another difference in the fall is that boats don’t start all together at the start of the race: teams are lined up and sent down the course one by one, so part of the fun of racing is hunting down the teams that started ahead.
