The
Oregon State men’s varsity eight and varsity four crews are competing at the Masters International Regatta in
Trebon, Czech Republic June 30 through July 2. OSU expects to face the
Czech Republic under 23 club boats that are competing for the U23 National team.
The Beavers could also see competition from other Eastern European teams.
OSU’s crew flew into the capital city of Prague last week. In total, the Beavers will spend seven days training and getting accustomed to the borrowed racing shells. Following their training in Prague, the crew led by coach will travel to the Southern Bohemian town of Trebon for the regatta on Friday the 30th.
“The guys are really excited,” Todd said prior to departure. “They are excited about the trip and they are excited about the opportunity. It’s really tough that we don’t know what we are going to be racing. I think the guys are really excited about going up against people they have never raced, kind of get a taste of something different.”
“The big difference is usually when we race here, we usually know who we are racing. We’ve raced Stanford so many times, we’ve raced Washington, we’ve raced Cal. We’re kind of flying blind a little bit. When we race on the West Coast we know everyone, and even on the East Coast we have some knowledge about the boats we go up against. Right here all I can look at is the heats. All I see is the teams we are racing. Every single one of these teams could be the team to beat, but we don’t know anything about them. Basically we just have to pull it together and do the best that we can do.”
The final days of training on the Willamette went well according to Todd, who added that with finals and graduation it can be a tough time of year to get good training done. However, he felt the team is dedicated to the work ahead and had trained well despite the distractions that were going on the past couple weeks.
The Beavers expect the greatest challenge of the trip to be getting used to the equipment as the team was unable to travel with its own shells and oars.
“It’s just a great opportunity. We really appreciate the effort of all the alumni,” said Todd. “The guys appreciate the effort from Fred [Honebein] for setting up the whole trip. I think they all are just excited to get a chance to represent Oregon State and hopefully have a great competition. We could be going up against a really strong boat. If they are trying to qualify for the under 23 championships, we could be racing the top eight guys in the country for that specific age category. So we just need to get ourselves prepared and give them a good race.”
Crew Members in the Czech Republic:
