St Catharine's College Boat Club

After winning the second division of Uni 4s last year W1 were determined to make an impression in the first division. Unfortuantely, due to availibilty issues we had not rowed together as a crew before the first round of the competition, but we were not going to let this get in our way!

In the first round we were racing Trinity Hall. Both crews were fairly level off the start, but after a few strokes we began to pull ahead and after a few hundred metres had taken a commanding lead. We held this lead all the way to the finish, winning by an easy margin.

Selywn W1 pulled out which put us straight through to the semi-finals. Here we faced the extremely imposing LMBC W1. We managed to stay level off the start, but they were rating much higher than us and managed to pull ahead. They retained this lead and, despite our best efforts, this very strong LMBC crew won by two lengths. Congratulations to LMBC W1 who went on to win the final against Caius.

We were very pleased with our rows and are looking forward to setting the crew for our first IV in preparation for Winter Head and Fairbairns.

W1 entered Autumn head after only a few outings togther as a crew, and without really having any idea of how we stood in relation to the other crews on the river. The long course enabled us to really start working together as a crew, and the row felt powerful and controlled. We managed to push off Girton, and even held off a very strong Lea RC crew who were bearing down on us in the closing stages. Despite a powerful and together row we finished eighth out of nine crews in the Women's First division. With more time in the gym and on the water we are optimistic that we will be able to compete with the top boats by Fairbairns.

Despite several setbacks we are now sure both the upstairs and downstairs of the boathouse will be available to use from the very start of Lent term.

Having been on a few site visits this term I can confirm that it will be a brilliant new facility, and certainly make us faster! Not to mention the admiration we will receive when the outside is given a generous lick of maroon paint.

Having had just three outings with our new coach, Lianne, we produced a solid row against a well drilled Trinity Hall to lose by three seconds.Trinity Hall went on to win in the next round before losing to Caius, the eventual runners up. The first half of the race seemed to be going our way with significant gains being made (we were drawn on station two, 120m behind Tit. Hall), however our lack of fitness showed as we approached the reach and Tit. Hall more than made up the ground against the fierce headwind on the reach - all credit to them for a well executed race.

The crew contained two newcomers to SCCBC, Dan Stein at 2 (First year medic) and Jonathan McCree-Grey (First year physics Phd) at stroke. Both have already shown themselves as great new assets for the senior men.

Training is now under way to put a competitive senior 8 into Fairbairns at the end of the month.

Come down to the boathouse this Sunday (October 5) to lounge around in the sunshine, eat some free food, have a go in the unsinkable boat, see what erging is all about, and generally meet awesome people, coaches, seniors and novices alike.

There will be people leaving from the Plodge every hour from 11am to take people down to the boathouse! Hope to see you lots of you there.