Women's Rowing Season Wrap-up
The 2006 Women’s Rowing season and came to a close recently with a solid performance at the Pac-10 Championship Regatta. Throughout the season, the Beavers showed improvement from last season and that they could be a crew to reckoned with in seasons to come.
“For the most part we had a very good season,” head coach said. “If you just look at how the varsity eight placed at Pac-10s, I don’t think it is a very good reflection of how well the team did this year. We finished seventh again this year, but I feel we had a much more competitive crew this year. They are much faster this year, they trained a lot better and we raced well and beat some fast crews this year that showed we were a much more competitive crew.”
As a team, the Beavers finished seventh at the Pac-10 Championships with the Varsity Eight and Second Varsity eight each winning its respective Petite Finals and the Varsity Four registered a sixth place finish in the Grand Final. But perhaps most importantly, the Novice Eight rowed to a fourth place finish in the Grand Final showing a glimpse of the future.
The 2006 season had several peaks that included victories over then-No. 16
Junior , who rowed the stroke seat for the Beavers in 2006, was recognized as a second team All-American. Leibinger also collected All-Region and All-Pac-10 honors.
After narrowly missing a Top 20 ranking in the preseason,
“We had a really good season in terms of everyone training well all-year long,” said Owen. “It was really consistent. We really only had one race out of the season that was disappointing to me in how we raced. The rest of the time, we really raced well. Obviously we didn’t win all of our races, but even the races we didn’t win I felt we got out there and did a really good job.”
At the conclusion of the season, freshmen Kalena Bell and Karen Beaty were invited to the USRowing National Team Freshman crew camp providing further proof that the future of women’s rowing is bright.
But OSU’s crew didn’t just get it done on the water, they also performed in the classroom. , , and received 2006 National Scholar Athlete awards, which amounted to more selections than any other school in the West Region. OSU also placed 14 rowers on the Pac-10 All-Academic team, including seven Beavers on the first team.
was named to the 2006 All-Region team by the CRCA, the 2006 All-Pac-10 Conference Women's Rowing team and was named to as a second team All-American. She was the first All-American since 2004.
