University of Minnesota Athletics
Rowing Set to Host Kansas and SMU
4/22/2004 12:00:00 AM | Athletics
Minnesota will host its only spring event of the 2004 season this weekend at Lake Phalen in St. Paul, Minn. The events will begin at 10 a.m., starting with the Second Novice Eight race. Minnesota will compete every event, including the First Varsity Eight race against Southern Methodist and Kansas. It is the first race against each team in Minnesota school history.
Order of Events
Saturday's events will start with a Second Novice Eight race between Minnesota and Kansas at 10 a.m. Listed below are Saturday's order of events.
Time Race Teams 10:00 2N8+ Minnesota/Kansas 10:15 N8+ Minnesota/Kansas 10:30 V4+ SMU, Minnesota(2), Kansas 10:45 2V8+ Minnesota/Kansas 11:00 V8+ SMU, Minnesota, Kansas Directions to Lake Phalen
Take Interstate 94 East to I-35 East North. Exit at Larpenteur/Wheelock, turn right onto Wheelock. Drive down Wheelock Avenue into Phalen Regional Park. At the stop sign, turn left into the parking lot for Lake Phalen.
Rowing Terminology: A Spring Race
The competition that takes place during the spring season, which the race course is always 2000 meters (about 11/4 miles). The race can take anywhere from 6-8 minutes, depending on the team. As many as six boats will line up across from one another on the starting line. Throughout the race, the coxswain may call "Power 10's" and other moves to jockey her position ahead of the other boats. At the last 500m, the coxswain changes the tempo of the race and enacts a sprint sequence that gradually pulls the rating up to around four beats higher than race pace. The boat that crosses the line first wins.
Head Coach Wendy Davis
Wendy Davis is in her fourth year as the head coach of Golden Gopher rowing. Under Davis the Gophers had a fourth-place first Varsity Eight finish in the Big Ten (2002), while gaining its first votes in the polls in the spring of 2002, in only its second year of existence.
Prior to Minnesota, Davis spent three years coaching national team members in preparation for the 2000 Olympic Games and was the head coach at Yale from 1993-97. Davis led the Bulldog women's team to a top-five national ranking in each of her four years with the program. n the nation. Before coaching at Yale, Davis was at Stanford for 10 years.
Tough Slate Ahead
Minnesota will head to the Big Ten Championships May 1, hosted by the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa. The Second Novice Eight competition is slated for the first race, while the First Varsity Eight is the last event contested. All of the heats will be raced from 8 a.m.-10:45 a.m. Finals (both Petite and Grand) will run from 12 p.m. to 2:45 p.m.
