Homeward Bound!
We’re headed back North! However, it’s hard to say that we’re really headed home just yet since our first important race of the year is upon us. The fall season is still racing and entertaining, but in actuality, has no real bearings on making the National Team for rowing. The first National Selection Regatta (ie NSRI) still may not yield a selected boat for the National Team, but it’s an important first step towards jockeying for position. Some other day we can do a post with diagrams and graphs to illustrate roads to the National Team.
For now, I just wanted to share some closing images from our time in Clemson.
Dan’s Office
If you look closely, you can see Dan perched atop the second story of the dock. It became his “office” from time to time.
Ref Driving
We wound up helping with four different regattas while staying in Clemson. Three were with the varsity women’s program and one was with the Clemson club program. Whether we were stake-boating, launch driving, or acting as a runner, Dan saw to it that we were the best and most efficient workers out there.
Scoreboard!
The last regatta we helped with was EPIC! Clemson planned to host a race with a handful of solid NCAA teams that wouldn’t face each other until NCAAs. Then, someone else asked to come and someone else after that. Before you know it, they had 19 teams coming to this almost impromptu regatta. Overall, things went swimmingly, but the second half of Sunday morning presented a patented Clemson crosswind that forced them to move to floating starts. This was a bit of an issue since the race results become much more ambiguous and aren’t as useful for NCAA standings.
Finish cam.
I can’t seem to escape timing duties! I was driving a launch Saturday morning, but by the afternoon, got shifted to help with finish line timing….. then, they never let go of me. It was sort of cool to see some of the differences and similarities between timing rowing and timing ski races. Not knowing my limited experience timing ski races, they thought I was some timing natural at this race. Props to our guru back home, Sheldon.
Now, last but not least….
Scorpion (not the character from Mortal Kombat, but the real one)
Sooooo, on Saturday, Charlie drove a ref around that told him about how scorpions were in the area and head indoors around this time of the year. Upon hearing this, we were all a mix of “yeah right” and “oh geez.” Then, that VERY night, Charlie starts yelling between laughs as he found a scorpion in our kitchen. It was time to go.