12 women and 1 coxswain, an 8+ and a 4-, training on the rivers of Berlin for the United States. Here's whats going on with the High Performance rowers.

Independence Day Regatta

I had been anticipating this race for a while: it was the first time outside of practice that we got to race with our newly selected HP teammates! I rowed the B boat with cox Olivia Sayvetz, Nora Hannum, Maddy Dinse, and Nina Demmerle. We put down a clean win in the heat at 9am, moving very well on the flat, (questionably) green water of the Schuyklkill River. In the next heat, the HP Ladies' A boat made the final with a second place. Our C boat was faced with an unfortunate surprise before the race: one of our rowers suddenly became sick, and a member of the sculling selection team took her place for the heat. Though they narrowly missed making the final, the boat rowed considerably well considering that a fourth of it hadn't been practicing in sweep boats! In fact, all of the boats were able to find great rhythms and work well together for the first race. In my boat, we started out third, but by the 1000m mark, we were walking it down on the other boats every time that Olivia told us to take a power 20. It was great to see that this team we have to work with is already fit, technically clean, and ready to race. In the next few weeks, we'll be able to focus on power, since we already know that our boats row pretty fluidly.

A little after noon, we went out again for the final. We were just getting into our warmup when Maddy randomly smacked a goose with her oar, which was hilarious. But by the time the got to the start, we were focused again and ready to put the smack down. We took 5th place, coming in a few boat lengths behind our A four, which got 3rd. Though we didn't win the intermediate division, we were still pretty psyched to do so well against college teams, who are of course much older than us!


It was the fourth of July, and we were all sweaty and hungry. So we were all pretty stoked when Coach Cas suggested that we celebrate by getting some real Philidelphia cheese steaks! It sounded like a simple enough plan, but finding the place was a bit of a challenge. It was a good thing that we stuck it out in the hot back seat of the van for the next hour trying to find it (though we were so sweaty that we were also uncomfortably stuck to each other), because Cas finally found the place: Tony Luke's. We chowed down on the best darn cheesesteaks and hot fries I've ever had! It was an awesome way to end the day.

Tomorrow, we will drive back to Connecticut College from Philadelphia. For the next two days, we'll continue to put in some good solid work on the water, on the track, and on the ergs before we head out on Thursday after morning practice to the airport. We are all super pumped for Berlin!