In the week leading up to last week’s race with Yale and Cornell, the Syracuse women’s rowing team knew it would have to go ‘crazy’ in the water to contend. Although the team did just that, it learned that without a consistent rhythm, it can’t move a boat fast enough.

‘You can’t race for seven minutes without a rhythm,’ said first-year SU head coach Justin Moore. ‘Yale and Cornell had it.’

The team heads to Boston this weekend for the Orange Challenge Cup. It will race against Northeastern and Pennsylvania, hoping to find its rhythm. Last weekend, the Orange learned that rhythm can mean everything in a race. In a boat that only includes four or eight rowers, if one rower is not able to pull her weight and maintain the ideal rhythm, the overall pace will be thrown off.

The team is now focusing on developing this consistency at practice, looking to fix what went wrong last week. Against Yale and Cornell, the Orange finished in third place in all five races. And the thing that Yale and Cornell had, that the Orange lacked, was that consistent rhythm in the water, Moore said.

So the Orange took to the water for practice this week, hoping to fix that. The team switched the makeup of each of its five boats a few times to get the right mix in each one. The team concluded that no changes had to be made, but that tempo was still the key focus, said graduate rower Chelsea Macpherson.

With such a young team, developing rhythm can be difficult and time-consuming, and a process that can take months. It’s a task that requires all boat members’ attention and effort for success to be realized, Macpherson said. And with a developing team, it’s not the easiest of tasks.

‘It’s going to be hard to get that rhythm,’ Macpherson said. ‘You need the whole boat’s effort. Every single person has to be locked in.’

Macpherson has rowed for the Orange since 2006 and has seen the program change during her time at Syracuse. With a new coach in Moore this year, coupled with the young makeup of the team, she realized from the start that this year would bring new challenges. Still, although concrete results on the water may not be at the level they were at a few years ago, Macpherson feels a new start was just what the program needed.

‘The old coach tried to work hard,’ Macpherson said. ‘But the message wasn’t working for our team.’

So the program was revamped, and Moore came in with impressive credentials as a six-time NCAA Division III champion in 11 years as head coach at Williams College. Still, making a mark on a program can take a while, especially at the college level.

When Moore started at Syracuse last summer, the team was not performing at the necessary level. The team’s indoor raw scores — including statistics that don’t need to be measured on the water, such as how hard the team pulled — were not as good as they needed to be, Macpherson said.

So Moore immediately put a premium on being in shape, Macpherson said.

‘Coach Moore has a different mindset,’ Macpherson said. ‘Every single practice, we’re improving our fitness.’

Because of that, rowers like Macpherson and junior Tiffany Macon feel the team can still progress to the point where it can contend at the Big East championships. But that rhythm must be improved in order to contend.

‘We understand exactly where we need to fix problems,’ Macon said. ‘We have to come off the line fast and find sprints at the end.’

Moore knows pure talent is not enough to win races. Work ethic pays dividends as well, but not just over a few weeks or even months. If the team continues to put in the amount of work it has so far this season, results will come, Moore said. Results to rival those of last week’s opponents.

‘It’s a combination of genetic talent and the cumulative work in progress,’ Moore said. ‘As painful as it is to admit, the women of Yale and Cornell have worked harder for over a year.’

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Published on April 6, 2011 at 12:00 pm

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