• Rowing Report #1 -- Katy Stine
     • Rowing Report #2 -- Eleni Johnson
     • Day 2, May 29 Recap
     • Day 2, May 29 Results (pdf)
     • Day 3, May 30 Heat Sheet (pdf)
     • Live Results
     • Day 1, May 28 Recap
     • May 29 PHOTO GALLERY
     • May 28 PHOTO GALLERY
     • May 27 PHOTO GALLERY
     • SPU Rowing Release (pdf)
     • Live Regatta Webcast
     • NCAA Rowing homepage



The Seattle Pacific crew is racing this weekend (May 28-30) at the NCAA Division II Women's Rowing Championships on Lake Natoma in Rancho Cordova, Calif. This is the first appearance by the entire SPU team at championship regatta.

Members of the SPU crew will be contributing rowing reports to keep you updated on their journey during the NCAA Championships. This is the third of those blog entries, from junior Lauren Anderson.



Wow! What an amazing race! We qualified for the Grand Final race by taking first in today's repechage with the most epic SPU finish yet.

We went in to today's race confident that we could qualify for tomorrow's finals by placing in the top two, but we never expected a race quite like this one.

One thing our coach has told us from day one is to row our race plan. So we went out to the course with exactly that in mind. We had some improvements to make after yesterday's heat and wanted to put those into action out on the race course today.

Our competition was Florida Tech, who we beat soundly yesterday, Philadelphia, who we took third from at Dad Vail by a mere second, and Barry, who received the second place spot at Dad Vail. Everyone was going to put out a strong effort, and our team was excited to challenge those crews.

As the race took off we were right with the pack. Barry gradually pulled ahead and we were neck and neck with Philadelphia for the majority of the race. Then came the half way mark where we jump start into the second half of the race. Philadelphia gradually fell behind and the cheers from the crowd could be heard, signifying that the finish was near.

One of my teammates said it best in the boat meeting after the race. She said “we were all like horses chomping at the bit, thinking 'can we go yet?'” And sure enough, our coxswain called out, “Power up, this is your sprint” and off we went.

I have never felt that much power, length or drive from our boat before. I knew we had the potential to walk it through Barry and that's exactly what happened. Beating them by only two seconds, we definitely gave the crowd something to talk about.

Now we are on to the Grand Final tomorrow to race our biggest competition thus far. Our race today gave us extra motivation and confidence that if we just row our plan like we know how, nothing is out of our reach.

-- Lauren Anderson