Monday, April 17, 2006

Clarification on MIT, URI, and Radcliffe

I've been informed that the Radcliffe novice eight that raced MIT and URI last weekend was a boat of only novices, with no recruits. The Radcliffe V8 had some injuries (not the novices) which undoubtedly slowed them down in their race with the heavyweights.

I think the most interesting point here is that Radcliffe has maintained at least one full boat of true novices through the winter and into the spring season. This is no small feat given the intensity at which a crew like Radcliffe trains. I would think that typically they start off in the fall with quite a few walk-ons, but would normally be lucky to keep 3 to 5 by the spring. This is another sign of Radcliffe's growing depth.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I would bet 5 of 9 of Radcliffe's V8 were walk-ons. (At wisco I'm guessing it's 7 or 8 of 9)


Assuming 3-5 Novice in the spring is too low. For a regular heavy rowing program at a school the size of Harvard, the novice coach should have 2 novice 8's. Since Radcliffe is in the top tier of what programs demand from their athletes, I think one novice 8 sounds about right.