University of Minnesota Athletics
Coach Strodel Reflects on the Fall Season
11/6/2019 11:48:00 AM | Rowing
With fall season coming to a close, Gopher Sports sat down with head coach Alicea Strodel to discuss what she has seen from her team over the past few months.
Gopher Sports: What did you see from your team this fall?
Alicea Strodel: Number one, there are great athletes on the team. As a byproduct of the walk on population, we are able to get women who were very good in sports prior to coming here and joining the team. These women can do really great things athletically, so it is good to know we have that athletic base. Now it's just transitioning that into rowing and getting all that athletic potential on the water. There is a lot of capacity on this team to be good, we just haven't transitioned from being an athlete to a rower yet.
GS: What are some things you and the team are going to focus on during the winter to prepare for the spring season?
AS: We spent the majority of the fall talking about the technique that we want to row and what that patterning looks like, especially in the upper end boats. Really describing that vision and having them make changes so that they were fitting into that stylistically, and it has taken hold. Now that we are moving better, we can come inside and be able to put on more work, volume and increase our aerobic capacity.
GS: The Head of the Charles boat was full of first-timers, how did they rise to the occasion and compete?
AS: I saw them come around the first turn and be in a good position. We were able to hold off Washington, who has won many National Championships, for a good part of the race. Some of that was good decisions on our end and bad decisions on their end. Seeing the women compete and fight that fight was nice to see. At the end, the result wasn't what we were hoping for, but I think it was a good eye-opener for us. Now we know where we are at on the national landscape. Now we have a plan and a path moving forward.
GS: How did the scrimmage against Wisconsin go?
AS: Taking the messaging from the Head of the Charles, we came home knowing that we had to work on length and aggression. For the past two weeks at practice, we have been talking about that a lot, drilled to it and practiced how we were going to attack pieces. The woman owned that. We switched around people to make sure we had the right bodies in the right places, and the lineups that emerged from that were what we raced in at Wisconsin. Wisconsin is a top-performer, so anytime that you can go lineup against a team like that is great. To get your bow ball in front of Wisconsin at any point in the race just shows that we can match speed. We had some really great results throughout the boatings. I think we learned, and saw that we can match speed with them, which is very encouraging coming into the winter. We know Wisconsin was down a couple of bodies due to injury and illness, but so where we.
GS: What are you most looking forward to this spring season?
AS: Given the way our women went out and raced last Saturday, I am really excited to see what that looks like down the whole distance of 2,000 meters. We do have a lot of work to do. We know that we need to make gains from a physiological standpoint. Our erg scores aren't where other team's scores are at, so coming inside to close that gap is really important for us. We need to make sure we are ready to go the full distance come spring.
Gopher Sports: What did you see from your team this fall?
Alicea Strodel: Number one, there are great athletes on the team. As a byproduct of the walk on population, we are able to get women who were very good in sports prior to coming here and joining the team. These women can do really great things athletically, so it is good to know we have that athletic base. Now it's just transitioning that into rowing and getting all that athletic potential on the water. There is a lot of capacity on this team to be good, we just haven't transitioned from being an athlete to a rower yet.
GS: What are some things you and the team are going to focus on during the winter to prepare for the spring season?
AS: We spent the majority of the fall talking about the technique that we want to row and what that patterning looks like, especially in the upper end boats. Really describing that vision and having them make changes so that they were fitting into that stylistically, and it has taken hold. Now that we are moving better, we can come inside and be able to put on more work, volume and increase our aerobic capacity.
GS: The Head of the Charles boat was full of first-timers, how did they rise to the occasion and compete?
AS: I saw them come around the first turn and be in a good position. We were able to hold off Washington, who has won many National Championships, for a good part of the race. Some of that was good decisions on our end and bad decisions on their end. Seeing the women compete and fight that fight was nice to see. At the end, the result wasn't what we were hoping for, but I think it was a good eye-opener for us. Now we know where we are at on the national landscape. Now we have a plan and a path moving forward.
GS: How did the scrimmage against Wisconsin go?
AS: Taking the messaging from the Head of the Charles, we came home knowing that we had to work on length and aggression. For the past two weeks at practice, we have been talking about that a lot, drilled to it and practiced how we were going to attack pieces. The woman owned that. We switched around people to make sure we had the right bodies in the right places, and the lineups that emerged from that were what we raced in at Wisconsin. Wisconsin is a top-performer, so anytime that you can go lineup against a team like that is great. To get your bow ball in front of Wisconsin at any point in the race just shows that we can match speed. We had some really great results throughout the boatings. I think we learned, and saw that we can match speed with them, which is very encouraging coming into the winter. We know Wisconsin was down a couple of bodies due to injury and illness, but so where we.
GS: What are you most looking forward to this spring season?
AS: Given the way our women went out and raced last Saturday, I am really excited to see what that looks like down the whole distance of 2,000 meters. We do have a lot of work to do. We know that we need to make gains from a physiological standpoint. Our erg scores aren't where other team's scores are at, so coming inside to close that gap is really important for us. We need to make sure we are ready to go the full distance come spring.
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