Is Oklahoma OK?

As a reader pointed out, Tulsa is absent from the light four event at Knecht. You may recall that Tulsa had an excellent row at the Head of the Charles (as evidenced by its fall season number four ranking) and I for one was looking forward to seeing how they would make out this spring. As a result, I wrote to Coach Kevin Harris to see what happened. Coach Harris responded by saying that the crew has suffered injury and sickness and is done for the year (didn't this happen to Pitt last year? [Update: see comments; I should've remembered this.]). He's clearly disappointed as is the crew. As a varsity program that is giving some attention to lightweights, I was pulling for the Golden Hurricane to have a successful spring. We shouldn't get too worried though, as Coach Harris goes on to say:

[W]e are still working hard to promote lightweight rowing at TU and I expect that we will be back with a more solid team next year. We'll be looking, with envy, at all of our lightweight colleagues races this spring! We wish we could be there.

In more news from Oklahoma, I see that Oklahoma City University is adding sculling to its program. This is the men's program but FITD readers know that I'm a big proponent of sculling and this is a good step. [Update: See comments - OCU is also recruiting lightweight women scullers!] There are problems that go along with it, of course, beginning with finding opponents. Nonetheless, I applaud the move. Isn't it funny that some of the freshest thinking is coming from Oklahoma (e.g. night racing), a place until recently viewed as a rowing backwater? Heck, we even have a pretty good lightweight team there!

I'd love to see a quad take over from the four, but again, there are some logistical problems with that. The next time I get on a conference call with FISA and the IOC, I've got the new Olympic program for them - only the fastest boats in each class (i.e. 8+, 4x, 2x, 1x), and both sexes and weight classes in each boat class except eights, which will only have heavyweight men and women. That would result in more international participation (because there are more lightweights) while cutting the total number of rowers by two (an IOC goal). It would be more exciting (faster boats) and more inclusive. Hmmm, maybe I should send that idea to the NCAA too.