That's a Wrap - Lakeland Rustlers Rowing

Lakeland Rustlers rowers started returning to the Vermilion Campus in late August to get ready for what appeared to be the first busy water season since 2019.

They had 3 events scheduled for the fall starting with a Head race in Saskatoon on Saturday, September 17^th, this would be followed by the Dino Sprints sponsored by the University of Calgary Saturday, September 24^th, and finish up In Leduc at the Leduc Boat Club for time trials Saturday, October 1^st.

In Saskatoon, we only took our senior rowers - 3 women and 1 man - and rowed quads.

Next up was the Dino sprints in Calgary where Rustler Crew hoped to redeem themselves after a lackluster performance in Calgary last year. Things started well in the morning with the women's quad in the time trials just missing qualifying for the final, we then had a long layoff until the afternoon races.

First up in the late day races was our Novice men's 8+ which despite some early struggles looked to be in control before the halfway point btu then had some critical directional challenges and ended up a disappointing 5^th. The Novice women's quad was next up and performed well finishing a close 4^th just 4 seconds behind the 3rd place crew from the University of Calgary. The last Lakeland boat to race was the Novice men's quad which needed one of our women to complete the crew.

Despite having just completed a race the female member of this crew dug deep, and the men finished a respectable 2^nd place to the all-male crew from Univ of Calgary.

The crews had all now been blooded in battle and they felt they could do better, and they set their sights on Leduc the following week for the time trials.

There was an expectant buzz around the crews as they rigged boats on October 1^st as they felt they has something short version of the thing to prove. The only caution Coaches Jenny and Peter offered was that this was an Olympic length race course (2000m… fully 500 m longer than anything they had experienced so far) and they should be careful about starting out too quickly.

The short version of the summary of the days trials would be that the men's team including the Novice Men's 8+, Men's 4- and the Men's quad were all victorious opening up considerable leads in at least 2 trials. The women did very respectably as well finishing 2^nd in the Novice women's 8+ and Novice women's quad. The only disappointment for Rustler Crew in the days trials was the 2^nd women's quad flipping in their trial after catching an oar on a lane marker.

All told it was a great training day for the Lakeland College rowers and a great way to finish off the water season. We pulled the docks before the long weekend, and we have now moved to indoor practices at the Vermilion Campus Rec Centre.