|
Last fall, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Varsity Rowing Team began its inaugural season. Thanks to the generous gift of an anonymous individual, the half-million dollar donation will cover five years’ of expenses for the new team, including training costs and new equipment. According to Coach Mike Bailey, the donor wanted to ensure that the greater Milwaukee area could benefit, too, which has led to a unique collaboration between MSOE athletics and the nearby Milwaukee Rowing Club.
Founded in 1894, the Milwaukee Rowing Club has a long and storied history. Five years ago, construction on the new boathouse at 1990 North Commerce Street was completed. MSOE rows as a part of the club and has full use of its boats, practice equipment and award-winning facilities, located just three blocks from campus; Bailey also serves as the coach for the club’s junior team. This partnership also allows the new MSOE team to draw on the expertise of members of the Milwaukee Rowing Club, which includes former National Team and Olympic athletes like Danika and Ben Holbrook. Chris Ahrens, who won the gold in the 2004 Olympics in Athens, also got his start rowing in Milwaukee.
“From day one, the MSOE rowing team was done right,” states Bailey. “We have great equipment, wonderful athletes and lots of school and community support.” In addition, MSOE is one of only two fully funded rowing programs in the Midwest, along with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The rowing team, open to all full-time MSOE students that are academically eligible, started the school year with 60 members. “At this point, we’re down to 30 rowers,” Bailey says, adding that such attrition rates are common for collegiate-level rowing teams. Since rowing is a nine-month long sport, it’s demanding of athletes’ time and efforts. “Plus, many MSOE students are taking 16-18 credits per semester on top of daily training and traveling to competitions,” explains Bailey.
In the fall, rowers train for distance, and daily 1.5-hour workouts typically feature long runs, strength training and lots of rowing. Regattas at this time of the year (such as the famous Head of the Charles in Boston) are often 5,000 meters. Bailey says that these regattas will feature upwards of 30 boats, starting every 10 seconds; since they typically follow the bends of a river, coxswains have to steer as well.
Come wintertime, the rowers move indoors. For the MSOE team, this means logging a lot of time in the recently completed $31 million Kern Athletic Center as well as in the erg room, located under Schlitz Park. “Winter workouts are often intense, with a primary focus on weight lifting, strength training and overall conditioning for two hours each day,” Bailey explains. During these months, the team will also travel to indoor rowing tanks in Madison and Chicago to practice blade work, too.
In the spring, it’s all about sprinting. Compared to the fall, these races are much shorter at 2,000 meters. Boats race in heats of six at a time, and every stroke is of the essence. The MSOE team traveled to Austin, Texas, this spring to train; Lightweight Co-Captain Brian Manning, a sophomore from Marquette, Michigan, remembers the trip to Texas as one of his favorite parts of the season.
But any rower can tell you that it’s not just about the physical training—mental training can make a world of difference. “I have found that even more important than your physical condition is your mental concentration,” says Andrew Bublitz, the Lightweight Co-Captain and an MSOE junior from West Bend. “During a race, after you’ve broken through ‘the wall,’ it is often the mental concentration that pushes you to the finish line.”
And for a first-year team, the MSOE rowers have had some spectacular finishes. Since all of the rowers are new this year, the MSOE team enters the novice category; next year, they’ll have a junior varsity category, too. At the Other West Coast Regatta, held in April in Michigan, the second novice 8 crew beat the University of Michigan by 0.37 seconds to take first place while their top novice 4 crew won by 20 seconds (which is four full boat lengths). The latter crew had never rowed together before, either. Clayton Bonfiglio, the Heavyweight Captain, recalls that, “We literally just jumped in the boat with no idea of how fast we could be. After the race, Coach Bailey told us we had to go to the Intercollegiate Rowing Association National Championships since we were so fast.”
Later that month, the second novice 8 took home the gold, defeating boats from Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State and Purdue at the Indianapolis Invitational. In mid-May, the MSOE team competed in two large championship regattas, the Dad Vail Regatta in Philadelphia and the ECAC National Invitational Rowing Championships in Massachusetts. The season will culminate in June at the IRA National Championship in New Jersey.
“My favorite part of the year? Every time a coach or rower from another crew asks who the heck we are and where did we come from after we beat them in a race or get pretty close to doing so,” says Bonfiglio. “It feels good to know that other schools are showing some respect for this team, a group of kids that have never rowed before and a school that has never had a rowing program.”
Bailey already has plans for next year’s team, too. “I have six or seven athletes coming to MSOE in order to row with us,” he says. “We’ve had such a successful first year, and I’m really looking forward to growing our team.”
|
