Last Saturday, Illinois Rowing headed down to Gainesville, Georgia, for our annual spring break training trip. The week was full of intense workouts, team bonding events, and preparation for the upcoming racing season. 

On March 14th, the team drove up to Clinton Lake to load boats, oars, and other equipment on the trailer for the week ahead. That night, athletes went to bed, ready to get some well-needed sleep for the ten hour drive next day. However, just a few hours later, at midnight, a tornado hit Champaign. Local officials sent out emergency warnings and triggered the siren, waking up most team members, who headed to the closest basement or first floor for safety. By 1 AM, the tornado had passed through, and the team could safely go back to sleep. 

As we enter winter training, we have many stories to share about our Fall season. With some varsity athletes racing four back-to-back weekends, it was a hectic few weeks full of memories and competition. This season was one of growth and learning for novices and varsity alike. This fall, we’ve been lucky enough to welcome Peter Filice to our coaching staff as our new head coach.

Starting back in August, we had one of the best recruitment periods in recent years, bringing in a large novice class. Novice Introductory Period, as always, was full of challenges, but we ultimately ended with a great batch of novices who were both passionate about the sport and motivated to put in the work for their teammates.

On Thursday, May 16th, Illinois Rowing traveled to Oak Ridge, Tennessee for the American Collegiate Rowing Association Championships. We raced every day through the 19th, and came away with some massive milestones for the program. This past weekend saw Illinois Rowing’s first ever medaling eight, with the women’s novice eight taking bronze, the second fastest 2k times in program history for both the men’s and women’s varsity eights, and a bronze medal in the women’s single, rowed by senior Kendall Blankenburg. In short, this was one of the most successful ACRAs in team history. This was reflected in our overall team points ranking, moving up 3 spots from last year. We improved on last year’s results across the board where comparable, and set ourselves up for even more success next year. Two athletes were also named to the all-Great Lakes region team, Gabriel Pfister representing the men, and Norah Harson the women. This was also our first regatta racing the new King 4+ Yama-Mama, with the novice men taking her to Oak Ridge.

Earlier this month, we made our annual trip down to Gainesville, Georgia for our spring break training trip. The team woke up bright and early on March 8th to begin our trek from campus to Lake Lanier Olympic Park. The trip was productive, with every boat making important technical improvements as we got on the water. We were very grateful to the several Illinois Rowing alumni who came out to act as guest coaches, who helped contribute to our development over the break. It was an exciting, yet tiring set of days as we got to work doing double or even triple sessions each day, getting in a lot of mileage and technical work.