League Race #2 - Port of Redwood City (February 27)

Photo by Mike Gill

Under foreboding skies, as word of a tsunami bearing down across the Pacific roiled the crowd, Berkeley High School faced off against Los Altos Rowing Club, Norcal Crew, Palo Alto Rowing Club and Serra High School early Saturday morning in its second league race of the season. 

Photo by Mike Gill

Rowing on a course that was shifted to mesh with sailboat races, the crews had to scramble to keep organized and execute their race plans. The Jackets, showing their flexibility, stepped up their game and rallied to win a number of races and "beat some boats" in others.

 
Photo by Eric Carlson

For BHS Crew spectators, the Port of Redwood City venue is a head-scratcher.  The starting line might be within view (this year it wasn't), but not the finish.  Only half the boats launch from the dock; the others come and go, unnoticed, from boathouses along the main channel of the port.  The racing action occurs out of sight.  Results are relayed back to the launch area by cell phone or, as this year, simply reported by the returning rowers themselves - unofficial and unconfirmed.  As the sun emerged, though, so did the picture of BHS's fortunes.

For much of the first hour and a half of racing, novice and freshman boats struggled with the "un-structuredness" of the competition.  Nonetheless, for these new rowers, the morning provided valuable racing experience.  After the first set of races, coxes began to understand the course.  The men's freshman 8+  (eight oarsmen plus the cox) landed a third place finish. The men's varsity 4+ finished second.  The coxless men's heavy (open weight) double sculled to a second-place finish, too.  Improvements were being made, errors recognized and adjusted for, experience gained, learning achieved.

In the cold air, rowers sought the comfort of a patch of sunshine as they waited on the water for their starts.  The men's freshman 4+, racing against novice boats (i.e., first-year rowers but not necessarily 9th graders), managed a great start, only to see it called back because two other boats had rammed.  The Berkeley boat eventually finished in fourth.

Finally, after three hours of frustration, the Jackets broke through.  The women's lightweight 4+ raced to a first place finish.  The boat (rowed by Acacia Masri, Yael Levin, Hannah McLester and Emma Goodfield and coxed by Juliet Grodzins) survived a bump with the Palo Alto Rowing Club to win by half a boat length over Norcal.  The men's lightweight 4+ (Zander Morgan, Sam Shaw, Daniel Remler and Graeme Horton, coxed by Evan Cohen) walked away from the other boats in their race.  Then, the women's open-weight double won, too.  Rowers Anna Linnea Rödegård and Djuna Elkan celebrated BHS's third victory in a row.  (Later in the day, back at JLAC, Djuna was rewarded for steering the coxless boat to a victory with a toss into the Alameda Channel - a sweet bit of satisfaction for the BHS senior.)

Rounding out the day's events, the men's JV 4+ rowed to a strong second and the women's novice 4+ competed well, too.  Turmoil had turned to progress. The sun was shining again.  As the team and the parents headed home, radios turned to the news from Chile and Hawaii.  An odd morning in a small corner of a vast ocean folded back into the larger current of events.