Photo Gallery
Competitive success under the red flag - our MT23 roundupBy Chloe Black (President) and Guy Rudman (Development)
In a time of record-high water levels and infinite red flag, SABC managed to pass some major milestones! After a summer of planning and preparing, our committee came back to Oxford ready to host our traditional freshers’ BBQ. This year, we fed over 100 people, and got nine full boats out for trial sessions! It was a logistical nightmare, but well worth the effort to see the bright-eyed young freshers have a go at this rare and fundamentally Oxonian sport.
Fuelled by the many novice sign-ups, we were so excited to get a proper start to the term – which started with on-demand outings on sunny mornings, and fully subscribed ergs! We were so impressed to see how quickly our novices picked up water technique, getting 'all eight' rowing very early on! Tragically, not very far into the term, this on-water progress was thwarted by heavy, relentless rain and the subsequent red flag from the lock-keeper, preventing any rowing boats from using the river at all! Thankfully, our novices kept faith and started training hard on the ergs. Interval sessions, sprints, pyramids, or an hour's worth of rate 20 - if you can think of it, we did it. Our women had great fun trying out some new dynamic ergs (thank you St Hugh’s!) and putting our ergs on sliders to make a 3-man land boat. Our men's side has excelled this term. Captained by the concerningly-dedicated Tom Lavis, and expertly coached by the wonderful Jocasta Bird, the men took the novice rowing world by storm, coming 5th in the New College Indoor Regatta, and FIRST in the Oxford-wide University College Ergatta! We couldn’t be prouder to have such dedicated rowers learning with us, and hopefully the progress will continue next term with plenty of water time, and perhaps novice entries into IWL - of course building up to the Torpids! Our senior women had their debut race of the season in IWL A, where they came 5th out of their boat class (4+/-), beating the almighty Brasenose college – a mega effort, especially since we were in a borrowed boat! Our very own star rowers Hazel Bott and Grace Glover have excitingly moved on to training with OUBC - the blues - and will hopefully be chosen for the lightweight boat in the big Oxford v Cambridge race! They have spent the term smashing out watts on the ergo 7 days a week - while they've been sorely missed by us, we have a feeling that it will be the Cambridge boat that will end up the most sore... In other news, some very exciting purchases and repairs were made at the start of term – SABC is now the proud owner of a beautiful Janousek 4+ from the army, called General Eliott. Our lovely boatman Pete has had it resprayed and it is now in perfect condition. Our legacy 8+, Queen Anne’s Revenge, has also been resprayed, and now proudly displays a bright red hull, with navy insides – very representative of the SABC colours! We feel so honoured to be working with such a dedicated team; the committee has worked so hard this term to maintain the momentum from last year, and we will only be getting bigger and stronger in the year to come. We hope to continue this term's competitive success into the next term, with more entries into IWL and then a monumental bumps campaign in Torpids – blades anyone? |