Wednesday, January 24, 2007

A Miss (Diss?) from UCF


Head UCF Coach Leeanne Crain was interviewed today on the UCF athletics Web site and, while there was much talk of UCF's appearance in the top 20 last season, there was nary a mention of the lightweights top five finish. Look, I understand that the rowing world often revolves around rowers who are "big women and proud of it and proud that we’re strong and we love to eat," but the UCF heavies just grazed the bottom of the top twenty during the season last year while the lightweights finished the season fifth in the country. Yes, a peek at the top 20 is a nice achievement for the heavies, but so is a solid 5th for the lights.

(Gosh I love that "love to eat" quote! It's only January and I've already found a way to use it.)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

As a second year member of the UCF lightweight team I have come to expect this. It's not that we are looked over it's just that we are not the focus of the school. It would be nice to get recognized from our own team but I think that it makes us work even harder to show them what we are made of. Being the underdog always gives you that extra drive. I use to think that it just sucked that we get not recognition despite being in the top 7 for the past couple years and they just broke the top 20 last year. Oh well, is my new attitute because what does it really matter we know where we are and thats all that matters. Plus we are happy with any media our school gets whether it be for us or the opens. Every little bit counts.

Anonymous said...

Although I see where you're coming from and I agree with you that the UCF lights do not get enough recogition, and it was amazing when we got 5th last year.... but... we did get 5th out of 12 teams and the heavies were ranked 20th out of well over 100 teams. It's a huge accomplishment for our school, and heavyweight is always going to take precedence over lightweight. They gotta start somewhere and Crain has taken the heavies from nothing to top 20.

JW Burk said...

As much as I like to tweak the heavies, I'm not trying to make light of the UCF heavyweight season as much as wonder why no mention for the lights. Yes, it was only out of 12, but that's because only 12 were allowed to enter - it's a championship regatta. Perhaps only 12 submitted entries but that's because the others knew they had no chance. If you read my early (a year ago or so) posts on the number of lightweight teams, you'll find that around 70 schools put out lightweight crews each year. Again, many of these are only fours, but they are self-selected because crews that know they won't be competitive don't bother with an eight. And where do those rowers go that aren't competitive lightweights? Into the heavyweight boats. When you start to look at the heavyweight boats that make up the hundreds you mention, there are some real dregs out there. I've also shown you that roughly the same number of schools have won the heavy mens' championship, heavy women's championship, and light women's championship over the last ten years. Do you think that the 12th place heavy women's eight was more likely to beat Princeton's heavies last year than Stanford was to beat Wisconsin's lights? Doubtful. Yes, there are a lot more heavyweight crews, but there are a lot more crummy heavyweight crews too.

I guess what I'm saying is, your loyalty is commendable, but don't sell yourself short.