Stetson to Add Lightweights!

Stetson will be adding lightweights to it's women's crew program with the first recruits entering school in the fall of this year. The Hatters aren't talking about simply rowing a few lightweight fours, however, they're going full bore - a goal of 9 to 10 rowers and coxswains this fall and 5 the following three years. And...scholarships are available. Looks like newly hired coach Chris Thomas will head up the program and he is the main recruiting contact. I guess UCF will have to pay a little closer attention to what's happening up I-4. In a short time they'll no longer be able to wake up each January 1st as the new year's Florida state lightweight champions!

Digging into the Everything is Connected File, we see that the Stetson head coach, Chris Deatrick, and an assistant, Jessica Clark, are both UCF grads. In fact Deatrick rowed as a lightweight at UCF and coached at UCF, including one year as the head lightweight coach. It seems a pretty safe bet that UCF's success helped convince the Stetson athletic department to add lightweights.



It seems to me that women's lightweight rowing is really starting to gain momentum. We had an exciting, highly competitive IRA Regatta last year, Tulsa added varsity lightweights, Alabama went varsity with the intention of keeping lightweights, Pitt is suddenly a national force in fours, the Radcliffe novices were blowing away heavyweights last fall, the slumbering lightweights at MIT are beginning to stir, and a lightweight coach is heading up the CRCA lightweight committee. Things are good and they're getting better!





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