With three head races and seven-odd weeks of fall training on the water behind it, the women's crew team heads into winter certain of one thing: starting spots for the spring season are up for grabs.
Following an influx of experienced freshmen and a few novice-turned-varsity sophomores who proved themselves repeatedly throughout the autumn season as legitimate contenders for seats in the spring boats, the winter offseason training will not only get the Jumbos in shape for the rigorous sprint races themselves, but will also help separate and distinguish among the wide pool of potential talent available.
"The great thing about winter training is everyone is on the same footing for the most part," senior co-captain Kaitlyn Mula said. "I mean, it's how many, 14 weeks long, so it makes you or breaks you; if you don't do the work, come springtime you're going to be in for a rude awakening when you realize that everyone else has been breaking themselves to make it. But then, on the flip side, if you do put in the work, you'll see that, come spring, you're just so much stronger and so much more ready to bring it to the next level in the boat, so to speak."
"These folks are going to sort that out on their own without my being present," coach Gary Caldwell said. "And it puts a lot of pressure on them, but it also creates a lot of opportunity for those who want to take that opportunity, and when you broaden that picture a little bit further ... and you take a look presumably in mid-March to figure out [that] out of that whole group of a varsity four, two varsity eights, two freshmen eights and somewhere between four and six athletes who are returning from abroad to give us a squad of 50, it's anybody's guess as to who's going to rise to the top."
Indeed, on the heels of what Tufts viewed as a successful head season -- including a pair of top-10 finishes at the Oct. 26 Head of the Fish to bring the year to a close -- that helped build up endurance across the entire crew, efforts now turn to the weight room and the necessary strength training to both ensure that the rowers reach peak condition and continue to acclimate the first-year rowers into the program.
"I think we had a very successful fall season, and I think we accomplished all the goals that we had," senior co-captain Steph St. Thomas said. "But now this is the time to get serious and the time to get fast. I think there's a lot to be said for our learning curve right now, since we have so many new people, that just by virtue of rowing together more often is helping. Just having so many new people every day in the boat -- I think they're making vast improvements."
Still, the notion of offseason training both for improving the fitness of the crew and for sorting out the spring roster will only further motivate the Jumbos to persevere through winter conditioning. Based on their performance in the fall, the Jumbos are more than prepared for the challenges that await them between now and the spring.
"If the fall is any indication as to how everyone on the team is going to perform over the winter, how much work they're going to put in, this spring is going to be nuts," Mula said. "Everyone's going to have to fight for a seat, nothing is going to be given to anyone -- you're going to have to fight, from the best seniors down to the freshmen, [and] it's going to be every girl for herself."
"[Knowing what the future lineups will look like] is absolutely a complete mystery because it's all about who does work over the winter, and there's no way to predict that," St. Thomas said. "I think we have no way to judge it until we get back on the water in the spring, because even if you're doing a lot of work, you don't know how it's going to translate to the water, too, and some people might be on the verge now and once they put in little bit of extra effort they might be fantastic rowers."
In the end, the crew's shape come March will depend on how both the veterans and the sizable group of experienced first-years push themselves through the winter, which will be no menial feat, even though most of those upperclassmen have gone through the Tufts fitness program during past offseasons. Still, this year's freshman crew class has been nothing less than a pleasant surprise for the Jumbos, especially compared to the smaller groups of less-experienced rookies that have joined the team in the past.
"The big difference between this year and previous years is there's an opportunity for freshmen to make a sea change, and when you have four freshmen on a varsity squad, that sea change is probably a ripple," Caldwell said. "When you have 18 freshmen on a varsity squad, that sea change can be more like a tidal wave if that group of people takes it upon themselves to buy into [the offseason training program] and do the work. From what I can see from this group is that pretty much everybody, regardless of what year they are, buys into this, and so we should expect to see some pretty significant changes."
The crew is prepared to feed off of its successes as it makes the full transition to the offseason.
"I definitely think that we saw progress, so now that [fall is] over, the only thing we can really carry is that motivation, because in terms of fitness, now that the fall is over, winter is a whole new ball game," Mula said. "It's not going to be the same kind of training; the only thing that's really going to carry you over is that motivation that you had and the hope that the momentum that we started in the fall continues through the winter."
"I think a lot of the girls are excited for winter training, which is something we don't normally have," St. Thomas said. "It can be something that we dread, but a lot of people are really excited to put in the work and be successful, which makes for a really great atmosphere right now. We just have to keep it up and play off of it."
