It’s always a long year for Georgetown crew, and tomorrow’s Head of the Potomac in Washington, D.C., will be the team’s first step in a long journey toward the IRA Regatta next June.
The 25th annual Scullers’ Head of the Potomac, which consists of a 2.8-mile course along the Virginia shore, will be Georgetown’s first test since posting high-ranking times at the national championship in June. The men’s heavyweight eight took third and the women’s lightweight eight finished fourth at the last IRA Collegiate National Championship Regatta.
Head Coach Tony Johnson, who will be entering his men’s and women’s heavyweight rowers in tomorrow’s competition, downplays the regatta’s long-term significance.
“It’s like a preseason event,” Johnson said. “If anybody wins, we’ll be really tickled pink, because it is awfully early in the year for us. . It’s more about how well they row than perhaps what the performance is. We’ll start reading it when we see it.”
Indeed, the fall season serves as a sort of test period for crew teams across the country. Whereas the faster-paced spring races last for only six to seven minutes, races in the fall consume about twice as much time – just what a coach needs to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of his rowers.
“We want to develop our own character and get a sense of what our strong [and] weak points are,” Johnson said, “to get our own identity.”
Whatever identity Georgetown finds, it will undoubtedly contain a few differences from last year’s, as four new coaches have been added to the roster.
Taking over the highly touted men’s and women’s lightweights are John Fife and Jim O’Connor. For the past three years, Fife headed the novice lightweights at the University of Pennsylvania and O’Connor served as freshman lightweight coach at George Washington University.
Both coaches have seen recent success. Fife’s squad claimed fourth place at the Eastern Sprints two consecutive years, and the Colonial freshman four placed fourth at this year’s IRA Regatta.
Georgetown also adds Justin Manning and Marc Mandel as men’s lightweight and heavyweight novice coaches, respectively.
Johnson said that his new coaches are “good people and they’re young and they’re very enthusiastic about their task. They’re still figuring out how everybody is, what they can do and how they can improve them, and that’s exciting for everybody.”
After tomorrow’s regatta, the new coaches will have about a month to continue that process. The Hoyas’ next competition, the Head of the Charles, will be held on Oct. 22-23. Johnson looks to the Boston race and Oct. 30’s Princeton Chase as his team’s primary test runs this fall.
“The biggest thing is . how they’re performing against other people,” Johnson said. “How they are racing, how they are handling the pressure and the situations, and how they are digging in on it – there will be some comparison to other schools.”
The Head of the Charles is particularly notable, as the competition will feature eight members of the U.S. national team.
But in the mind of the Hoyas’ head coach, the fall is about more than just finishing times.
“The fall is a time for us to work on our base conditioning,” he said. “We can take the time to drill and work on technique individually.and to work on endurance. So it’s a building time for us. And it’s also a fun time – the fall races, there’s a far different racing experience. And for the most part, I think the crews enjoy it and look forward to it.”
Half a year remains before those heavily charged spring races, in which the lightweight squads are slightly favored to be major contenders. For now, though, it is the Head of the Potomac that will serve as the focus of Georgetown’s rowers.
The start times of tomorrow’s events range from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The tournament recommends that spectators view the races from the south end of Wisconsin Ave., the banks of Roosevelt Island, Thompson Boat Center or the footpath and park beside the Kennedy Center.
