K-State rowing finds focus at Longhorn Invitational

The K-State Wildcats' rowing squad began its spring season on March 18-20 with the Longhorn Invitational at Lady Bird Lake in Austin, Texas.

The team competed 1st Novice 8, 1st Varsity 4, 2nd Varsity 8 and 1st Varsity 8 races against San Diego, Louisville, Central Florida and Iowa.

The Wildcats only won one race on the weekend, but the focus of the competition was getting technically proficient against teams that had all winter to train on the water.

"With the lack of water time we had compared to other teams, we didn't know how it was going to go," head coach Patrick Sweeney said. "I was confident with them physically, but I was hesitant with them on the water. We increased our rate of strokes per minute from about 28 to 31. A good race rate is 34 to 36, so we're catching up."

On Friday, the team faced off against San Diego and lost with all four boats. However, three of the races were close with K-State finishing within six seconds of San Diego.

Saturday the team faced Louisville in the morning and again lost all four. Later in the day, the Wildcats finally got their first victory of the spring when the 1st Novice 8 boat beat the University of Central Florida by 18 seconds.

"What was interesting about that win was they came out fired up and started off well," Sweeney said. "In novice racing, there tends to be a lot of mistakes made, but they didn't make any mistakes. They went out and beat Central Florida, a team in the sunshine and gets to be on the water earlier, which is great."

The Wildcats lost the other three races to Central Florida, then four to Iowa. Despite the losses, Sweeney was satisfied with how the girls performed and improved over the weekend.

"It was a good start to the season for us," Sweeney said. "You never know until you get onto the water what you can do. The teams that we were up against have been in the water, they have tanks that they can practice in, so they're further advanced than we are. We got beat by them but the thing about it is that we weren't far off them. The next step is to step it up and close that gap."

Two other factors played a key during the Wildcats' performance at the Longhorn Invitational; the weather and the changing of lineups. Similar to last year's Longhorn Invitational, the weather failed to cooperate and made life difficult for the rowers. As for the lineup changes, one of Sweeney's goals going into the event was to find the right combination for each boat to be successful.

"If you're on the water, we would have done it in January or February," Sweeney said. "It's just part of putting together a crew. Sometimes the land training results don't reflect how technically well someone is. We went into the races with the knowledge that we would move people around. It was something to mess around with."

With the first event and a week of water training over spring break complete, the Wildcats are now preparing for the San Diego Crew Classic, beginning April 2.