The Kansas State rowing team traveled to Sarasota, Florida, to compete in the Sunshine State Invitational over the weekend. The competition was a two-day event, taking place at Nathan Benderson Park. The competition included teams like host UCF, Clemson, Kansas and Miami.
The Wildcats took bronze in the Varsity Four race on Saturday, highlighting the two-day performance.
“This weekend was a huge learning opportunity for the coaches and the athletes,” head coach Patrick Sweeney said in a press release to K-State Athletics. “We saw what we need to work on in order to keep moving forward. Looking forward, we plan to make some shifts with lineups. We still have time to make adjustments and make sure we have the strongest combinations possible.”
Redshirt senior Logan Frost, with sophomores Ellie Hahn, Elizabeth Sloan, Kate Odgers and coxswain Kaitlyn Henke, were part of the team that took third in the Varsity Four race. Finishing with a time of 8:56.43, the only teams that finished ahead of K-State were UCF and Clemson.
The Wildcats also managed to defeat in-state rival Kansas by over 23 seconds.
Related:
Baseball triumphs over No. 3 Texas Tech in weekend series
“Toward the finish, I think we all decided that it was just time to go,” Frost said. “That’s where we improved from yesterday. We sat in there and said, ‘Okay it’s time to go. We’re going to go here. We’re going to go together.’ That’s the biggest leap we took from yesterday. Every race we are learning a little bit each time so that by Big 12s we’re going to be ready.
The Varsity Eight team also finished in the top five on Saturday, taking fifth place with a time of 8:01.36. Sweeney said she believes that this wasn’t all that the group had to offer.
“The 1v8+ didn’t repeat what they did in the heats,” Sweeney said. “They had a rough start this morning but were able to still be in the race up until the halfway point. Around the 1000 they caught a boat-stopping-crab, which took them out of the race completely. The boat didn’t show their true speed today. We know we can go faster and we’re ready to work back into that speed.”
The Wildcats will travel to Tulsa, Oklahoma, next weekend to compete in the Tulsa Triangular. Tulsa and Central Oklahoma will be among the other teams competing with K-State.
