The Mac Weekly

Issue date: 10/31/08 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Daniel Kerwin River retreat. The women's novice eight hit the river for their race during the North Star Challenge last Saturday.

Watching teams of boats gliding along the Mississippi River is one of the most pristine sights to be had in the Twin Cities. At this past weekend's North Star Challenge the Macalester Crew team got the opposite side of the story, with the rowers testing their physical limits in order to push their boats upstream in as quick a time as possible. From their point of view the situation can sometimes feel more like being on the high seas.

To outsiders, crew might seem like a peculiar endeavor, but that didn't stop a large number of Macalester students trying it out for the first time this semester. This season the crew team consisted of 17 varsity rowers and a whopping 18 novices stuck with it throughout the season.

"Usually we lose quite a few of our novice recruits at this point by attrition, but we've had a lot who've stuck around," Emir Berganovic '09 said. "They're a great group; they're very athletic and very enthusiastic."

This level of participation is a sharp contrast to what seniors such as Berganovic encountered when they were freshmen.

"When we started as freshmen they moved us up to varsity after only two weeks," Berganovic said.

Although the sport may seem simple, with the rowers rowing and the coxswains steering and directing the rowers, the veterans can attest that it's not as simple as it looks.

"There was an issue our freshman year, we got blown off course and the University of Iowa got blown even more off course and ran into us," Bobby Painter '09 said. "But they got penalized, not us."

"It's definitely more mentally intensive than you think," Emily Heckel '10 said. "You have to pay attention to what everyone else is doing."

Besides the obvious need to become oriented to life on the water, the new rowers have had to learn some of the quirkier aspects of crew, such as the nix on wearing black socks while rowing, or the advantages and disadvantages of wearing tight neon pants, or the apparent benefits of "the drank," a Lance Armstrong sponsored sports drink of which Painter says "I don't know if it actually does something, but we pretend it does."

Continued...

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