All in a row
10/13/2009 11:00:00 PM
The Bromfield High duo have rowed since seventh grade but only started racing together in a double boat this summer, when they won the Philadelphia Youth Regatta on July 18 in 8 minutes and 32 seconds — beating a 16-and 17-year-old by 15.31 seconds. At the end of September they won the double again in the Tail of the Fish Regatta in Saratoga, N.Y. with a time of 14:08:65, beating a junior and a senior by 51.57. They also finished second recently in the Head of the Textile in Lowell.
“We just go in thinking we can do it and it just works out,” MacLean said. “We just try our hardest. Just because we’re underdogs we don’t look at it as a disadvantage.”
Those big wins under their belt are a big reason why the girls, who raced varsity as eighth graders last season, are so confident going into the famed Head of the Charles Regatta this weekend in Boston. Because each rower can only compete in one event at the Head of the Charles, Bromfield will only enter in the boys and girls youth eights. The boys will race at 11:24 a.m. on Sunday while the girls will race at 11:58 a.m.
“Last year we went mostly for fun,” MacLean said. “This year our new coach has been telling us she wants us to finish in the top 50 percent.”
Bromfield’s new coach, Holly Hatton, coached at Boston University for 13 seasons before leaving BU in 2008. She can only improve the team’s Head of the Charles performance from last fall, when one rower was using an oar handle that was inadvertently screwed on improperly.
“Last year they raced they were a bunch of eighth graders completely freaked out and overwhelmed,” Hatton, 59, said. “One kid was rowing and forcing the handle to stay in and the same time. I don’t know how they did it. Every time you pull it the oar would be pulling itself out of the shaft.
“Finishing in the top 50 percent is our goal. We don’t want to over reach. We’re rowing against the best of the best in the country.”
Last week Hatton, who has also coached at Harvard University, used her connections to get her team some practice time on the Charles, which was helpful for Hart because she missed last year’s event.
“What I got out of the practice certainly was a hard workout but it was also good to see where you are at different points, different landmarks,” Hart said of rowing out of the Harvard boathouse. “It will help me keep going when I get to a bridge and know how many miles are left.
“That was really exciting and cool. I think our eight [boat] has a lot of potential and I’m excited to see how we do in such a large race because we’ve been to a lot of smaller [regattas] so far. It gave us a good feel for [the course] and the environment. We row on such a small pond that has some tough turns. It was good for us to get a feel for the length of it because it’s a long race.”
Racing through the Bare Hill Rowing Association, the Bromfield High team is technically a club sport and not officially sanctioned by the school. The athletes pay a $700 fee to the rowing association and they practice five days a week on the Bare Hill Pond in Harvard both in the fall and the spring.
“It’s tiny,” Hatton said of the pond. “We can’t row five minutes without turning around. It’s definitely a challenge to get them in the condition I hope they will ultimately have. But it’s absolutely beautiful, absolutely gorgeous. That’s why when I saw the pond was so beautiful I thought, ‘what a place to be on each day.’”
Because the girls’ team shares boats with the boys’ team, Hart and MacLean only get to practice together as a double team once every two weeks.
MacLean said the lack of practice together can be frustrating.
“We just go out there and go as hard as we can and really focus when we do have practice,” MacLean said.
Hart said, “We started out and we didn’t know each other that well but we became friends over the course of a couple seasons. Now we know each other well and know our strengths and weaknesses and can help correct them even if the coach isn’t around. We can feel it in the boat.”
But Hart and MacLean both said having a former college coach at the helm of their squad has made all the difference in their technique and they have been impressed at how well Hatton has transitioned from coaching college to coaching high school.
“She motivates us a lot and makes you want to work hard,” MacLean said, adding that Hatton troubleshoots their technique quickly and accurately. “She will make one change and fix a lot of the problems. Other coaches will make lot of changes and fix things individually. Her changes, you can tell she knows what she’s doing.”
Hatton will also be a tremendous resource for MacLean and Hart when they start to get recruited by schools and decided where they want to row in college.
But until that point they don’t worry about letting all their early success get to their head — regardless of how they finish at Head of the Charles.
“I don’t think of it that way at all,” Hart said. “By the time we are upperclassmen we’ll be even better. There are a lot of things we could fine tune. We could do a little better at staying together in the boat at all times. That’s what’s good about rowing both seasons [fall and spring], there’s a lot of little technique things you can fix.”
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