GLRF hosts a booth at the 2010 USRowing Collegiate Championship Regatta

GLRF was one of five vendors at the inaugural launch of the USRowing Collegiate Championship Regatta 22 – 23 May 2010 on Lake Mercer in West Windsor, New Jersey. The location, just 7 miles from Princeton University, is the site of the US National Team training headquarters. The 2500 acre Mercer County Park surrounds the lake and makes for a beautiful setting for the races. The seven-lane buoyed 2000m. course has hand held starts and a dedicated Finish Tower.

The event allowed open entry, without affiliation, from any college or university for men and women, in regular and lightweight classes, and for 31 events in 7 boat classes: 1x, 2x, 2-, 4-, 4x, 4+, and 8+. As a result, there were unaffiliated entries from various small schools, as well as entries from larger rowing programmes like the University of Tulsa, University of Massachusetts, Villanova University, Loyola University, Duke University, Fordham University, Lehigh University, Colgate University, and Craftsbury Sculling Center, all told 89 entries from 18 clubs. One rower who rowed for Hamilton College will be competing at the Under23’s for Angola, where his parents live and where he learned to scull.

The weather was sunny and East Coast humid/hot on Saturday but then turned overcast and chilly on Sunday. Ex-Olympic gold medalist Pete Cipillone acted as the announcer for the final races on Sunday morning and his insightful and humorous commentary combined with the new live video feed provided by USRowing gave many of the spectators a great feel for the race.

With an investment of $15,000 in video equipment, USRowing has launched live race feeds for all of its events and the races can be viewed on the US Olympic Committee website which hosts the video feeds. The quality of the video is first rate with a camera crew in one of the chase boats as well as a camera at the finish line.

Gusty winds on Sunday morning made the video technicians nervous about setting up the 46” HD television monitor to showcase the race feeds but a perfect solution appeared when GLRF volunteered the hatchback of our rental car as the display case, parked inside an open tent. Naturally, all the spectators had to congregate right next to the adjoining GLRF booth to watch the feeds …

Medals were awarded in what some call the ‘British style,’ meaning that the boats came alongside the dock after finishing the race and the medals were draped around the necks of the rowers still in their seats. USRowing officials explained that the awarding of medals had to be run in this manner to accommodate the large number of rowers competing two and three times during the day. Race times were bigger than usual due to a sizable head wind blowing down the course.

USRowing has said they are committed to supporting the race event going forward, even with the light number of entries in this first year. Many of the collegiate programs said they just did not have the budget dollars to allocate to an additional event in the current year but they do plan to enter their crews in the next year.