St Catharine's College Boat Club

The women’s boat club had two fours out this Michaelmas: a competing first boat and a second boat just doing water outings. The term has been an exciting one for the women’s side of the boat club, not just for the seniors but also for the strong novice cohort. 

 

The senior crew competed in a number of races this term, showing a good solid performance. Unfortunately our Uni IVs campaign was cut short due to a narrow loss to FaT in the first round by half a length. The crew showed a valiant effort, seeing as our race plan was for the side by side racing we were assuming would be happening, which apparently no longer does. Our last minute race plan consisted of push hard, then push harder and the crew gave it their everything despite a strong wind down the reach. 

 

We then had a change of crew in the W1 boat which set out to train for the rest of the term. Our plan for Winter Head was to get a strong row which we felt we achieved, coming 5th out of the colleges and beating some off-Cam boat clubs as well. 

 

The next focus was of course Fairbairns, the event of the term. Initially it looked like we would struggle to race, due to other commitments. The first compromise was racing in novice Fairbairns, not particularly ideal. Some brilliant rearrangement meant that we could race on the senior day at the end of the Women’s Eights division. Unfortunately this meant we had to time ourselves but we were able to race the full fours course. We came 10th out of the college IVs with a solid row from everyone meaning we all went to boat club dinner with our head held high and celebrated a good term of rowing. 

 

Rowing for the women looks exciting next term with a large number of novices hopefully coming up to join the senior boat club. We will be able to get our new VIII back out on the Cam and train for what will hopefully be another successful Lent Bumps Campaign.