A blanket of fog covers Lake Howell on Saturday night. The moonlight still shines brightly as fifty boys run on the road trying to set their personal record time for a two mile run. Sprinting to the finish line, you can see the muscles relax in their bodies and they practically collapse from exhaustion. This is a common theme within the sport of crew or rowing. The feeling of exhaustion. It is something athletes must cope with and embrace on top of the constant feeling of pain. No person, especially a high school athlete, wishes to wake up at the crack of dawn to practice, but no rower would have it another way.
Winter Park Crew is coming off one of their most successful seasons yet. Placing 1st within the state of Florida, 2nd at the worlds largest high school regatta, the Stotesbury Cup, and 3rd at Nationals, they look to repeat this successful season. As the 2015-2016 fall portion of racing comes to an end, Winter Park Crew has all the indications of having another amazing season. The fall season in crew consists of head racing. Long distance races, normally 5K in length, where crews race against the clock. The largest head race in the world takes place right here in the United States in Boston. It is called The Head Of The Charles Regatta. With over 10,000 competitors in 40+ categories, it is filled with the worlds top rowing athletes. Winter Park Crew entered within this competition in the Youth Men’s 8+ category with countries such as South Africa and Australia participating in the same category. Winter Park placed 14th out of 85 and beat their time from last year by 30 seconds.
The next head race attended by Winter Park this fall was Head of the Hooch; the largest head race regatta in the southeast in Chattanooga. Out of 71 entries in the Youth Men’s 8+ category, Winter Park placed 4th . They only finished .1 seconds behind 3rd and .5 behind 2nd place. When asking Yale commit Daniel S. what he thought about the season he exclaimed “We are showing some good speed this year. We are excited about what we will be able to prove. We have some good talent and definitely look to win some hardware this spring.”
Winter Park Crew looks to improve upon their known reputation of being a successful team. They will be training hard over the winter with multiple days cross-training and doing various activities to get in shape.