BU battling Mother Nature

The Charles River basin has finally thawed, and the Boston University women’s crew team couldn’t be happier about it.

Due to cold weather conditions – snow and ice stretching from just past the DeWolfe Boathouse down toward the Museum of Science – the team hasn’t had as much time on the river as they might have liked. In fact, the Terriers had only four practices on the water over the entire week of Spring Break. As the team gears up for its first race of the spring season this weekend, they’ll find out if that extra time on land will help or hurt their performance.

“Despite the weather conditions, I don’t feel like we’re really much behind anyone else,” said novice coach Gailyn Perrin. “Every other team in the region has had the same problem. We did a lot of land workouts to make up for the missed water time. We even added in some work shoveling snow off the dock over break.”

Co-captain Hillary Hegener, a junior who rows six seat in the varsity eight, also downplayed the negative effect of less time on the water.

“Not being on the may have actually helped us in terms of fitness levels,” she said. “We’re a technically strong enough team that I think we’ll be okay, and personally I feel as fit as I’ve ever been.”

Several athletes on the team expressed similar sentiments.

“I definitely feel more fit than I ever have in my entire life, and I think that will really help us in the third 500 [meters],” said sophomore Freddie Garnier, the bow seat in the varsity boat. “Obviously, we’ll know more after Saturday.”

The increased fitness levels on her team may be due to BU coach Holly Hatton’s new training strategy.

“The preparation has been very different than in past years,” Hatton said. “I would say it’s a lot more like what a national team does.”

That means a focus on low intensity, steady state workouts rather than shorter pieces at a high intensity level and a lot more work in small boats instead of eights, which Hatton said forces her rowers to pay more attention to technique “because without it, the ride would just be miserable, with the boat flopping all over the place, no balance.”

Hatton decided to make the change in training after her team finished No. 7 in the nation last spring.

“We just couldn’t break into that top six, and I knew it wasn’t because my athletes hadn’t been doing the work; it was because I just hadn’t bitten the bullet as a coach,” Hatton said.

She said her athletes were skeptical in the fall because the steady state rows seem to be less work at first, but “in reality, it’s a tougher, more demanding workout, just at lower levels so it can be sustained for longer periods of time.”

The new preparation has worked for her team, she said.

“The varsity [eight] is the fastest I’ve coached at BU. They have definitely improved. I look at the boat and just see the improvement in balance and swing,” Hatton said.

But there are still some obstacles to overcome. The Terriers have been plagued by injury, and four people, who Hatton thinks “really would have made an impact on the boats,” will be standing on the dock as the rest of their team shoves off the dock tomorrow. Two of those on the sidelines are expected back in action later in the season.

And as in past years, the Terriers aren’t as tall as they’d like to be. While their average competitors average 5-foot-10, Hatton estimates her rowers average out at 5-foot-8 on a good day. However, Hatton hopes her team’s new training style will help even the score. Her goals for the season include getting a team bid to the NCAA Championship over Memorial Day weekend and breaking into the top six teams. Perrin also has high hopes for her novices.

“This year, we probably have less experience as a team in the sense that more of the people at the top are walk-ons,” Perrin said.

Five of the nine people in her first boat walked on to the team this fall.

While the varsity crews are usually dominated by the same few schools, the novice powerhouses fluctuate more from year to year as one school may have a particularly good recruiting year or a talented group of walk-ons. Based on the fall racing results, Perrin named last year’s NCAA champs, Brown University, as an area crew to watch, and also mentioned Dartmouth College, Radcliffe College and Northeastern University as potentially tough matchups.

BU has traditionally had one of the largest novice squads around, and this year is no different. Because of the number of women on the team, Perrin said, “I had to make some tough decisions. I probably had 12 people vying for first boat.”

The Terriers are excited to be opening their spring season on their home waters.

“We all really want this. We want to win this weekend, and we want to knock three crews down at once,” said co-captain Alexis Brady.

BU faces Syracuse University, the University of Texas and Duke University tomorrow morning on the Charles River. The third novices will race Northeastern and Radcliffe.