Rowing Team works hard in the Fall for Spring Championships
Written By: Ben Decowski
Senior Writer
Old Dominion University is known for its dedication to producing excellent sports programs. From their beloved basketball teams to their upstart football program, the Monarchs have managed to put top-notch teams together year in and year out. The ODU women’s rowing team is no different.
Established in 2008, the program has already made huge strides opening up a $2.3 million ODU Rowing Center this spring, located on Willow Wood Drive in Norfolk, VA. This new facility is especially important in a sport that spends most of the fall semester getting in shape and ready for the spring championships.
“There’s a lot more movement to rowing than you would first imagine. From the outside looking at it, the thing that kind of dulls your eyes is that the boat is moving with these athletes, so you get kind of dulled to the speed that they’re actually moving,” first year head coach Daniel Garbutt said. “I mean boats are moving over 10 meters per stroke and their moving sometimes 38 to 40 strokes per minute.”
The rowing team spends the fall working on their technique and stamina, while also getting the new members used to the sport. “We find ourselves mixing the entire group, varsity down to these beginners, to try and elevate their learning curve a little bit,” coach Garbutt said.
The races in the fall are five kilometers long, which can be a shock to the system for some new rowers. “There are walk-ons right now who have never seen an ore before,” coach Garbutt said, “So this is really about building more than anything else this phase of the year.”
Coach Garbutt expects his team to show up at the Rowing Center at 4:45 a.m. for practice at five so that the women can get a good practice in before their 8 a.m. classes. “I rarely have them over 90 minutes. It’s usually 80 minutes or less,” coach Garbutt said.
The early practices are also important because the girls have to get on the water before it gets busy. “The main thing that makes rowing unique is that we don’t have a fenced in field or a doored in gymnasium,” coach Garbutt said, “We’re practicing on a river that’s open to crabbers, fishermen, pleasure boats, foul weather, you know, so there’s a lot of things to be able to kind of account for.”
The fact that the Norfolk area is surrounded by water is what makes ODU such a good location for a rowing program. “Most northeastern schools are landlocked, you know forcefully landlocked, for a good portion of their winter,” coach Garbutt said.
The Lady Monarchs have easy access to the water year round since the rowing center is just about a six minute drive away from campus. “Yale for example, I think their commute is almost forty minutes to their rowing site,” coach Garbutt said.
While the location of ODU and the new facility are big advantages for this fairly new program, it is still a challenge to put together a competitive team in the Colonial Athletic Division and the Mid-Atlantic region that includes No. 1 Princeton.
“I think the challenge for everybody has been to feel like you go into these regattas and you feel like you have a sense of respect from your competition. I feel like we’re getting to that point and that’s sort of a rewarding feeling,” coach Garbutt said.
The rowing program certainly has work to do to become the top ranked championship contenders that they are capable of being, but the program is making all of the right moves to get there. “It’s always going to be the goal of this program to improve,” coach Grabutt said.
The Rivanna Romp in Charlottesville, VA this past weekend was the last competition of the fall for the team. They will pick back up in the spring on Mar. 17 at the University of North Carolina and University of Delaware here at ODU as they get ready to make their championship run.
Photo By Old Dominion University
