Western Sprint Champs

This Saturday I participated in my first ever regatta race. I left the Calgary airport with the rest of the juniors on Friday night, sat through the shortest flight of my life and got ready for an early morning. The 6 am wake-up turned out to be not too bad and I found myself reminiscing of the good old swim meet days. We had raced our first event by 9 o’clock. Afton and I were paddling a double. For it being our first time ever in a double together (Afton’s second time ever in that kind of boat) and my first time bowing we did very well.
I found myself racing in the novice men’s quad next with James, Alex, and Ian. We got to our start really early and got to watch the other boats struggle into position. The Edmonton boat in the lane next to us was the next in place. As I watched them maneuver into place, I leaned forward to Ian and said, “I wonder if they realize they are backwards. I feel kind of bad if they don’t. ” Ian looked over, laughed and said, “no probably not but, let’s just see what happens. They did eventually end up turning themselves around as it would have been even more of a pain to back their way down the 1000m course. The starter said, “Ready,” and, “Row!” We got a clean start and Alex set a good, strong pace. We were feeling strong and out of the corner of my eye I could see the quad in lane one bow to bow with us. James called a hard port to keep us straight and in our lane and we picked up the pace again, powering our way to the finish. We came across the line first, high fives all around. We were told that our team didn’t count; we were an exhibition team because I was a girl competing to fill in my team’s boat in the junior novice boy’s category. We were still awarded medals and just knowing that we came across the line fourteen seconds before the next team.
My next event was the women’s quad with Ashley, Lisa, and Nicole. We were solid all the way through and won our event as well.
Calgary had an awesome regatta. All the juniors won at least one of their events some two or three.
This was the first regatta of the season for us since the Leduc Freeze or Fry was canceled due to some weather issues. But since when does it snow at the end of May!
My next regatta is in August: the Royal Canadian Henley in St. Catharine’s Ontario.

Afton and Marissa in the double