No Complaints Here

Needless to say, it was an emotional day on the race course yesterday. After a pre-final night of biting fingernails, fidgeting in our seats, and feeble attempts to ignore the growing tension so that we may snag at least a couple hours of precious sleep (hours which, inevitably, were spent dreaming about what successes, or failures, tomorrow might bring), we did indeed arise rather well rested. Rested, but fully aware that the next few hours had the potential to bring some of the most monumental events of our rowing careers.
Pre-race time tends to bring out sides of one's crew mates that you would normally not ever see. This particular pre-race brought to the table levels of focus that would seem difficult to reach in any other situation. The gravity of all that lay behind, and even more so, ahead, weighed heavily on us all, forcing us to summon up strength and courage from very distant, and perhaps frightening, parts of ourselves. It may be argued that in the 30 minutes before the final at Henley, one can learn more about himself and his boatmates than he would ever have imagined. Welcome to the show.
They say to embrace the nerves that begin to take over during those agonizing minutes on the starting block. It doesn't seem to make very much sense, really. Everyone has experienced anxiety. Multiply by a hundred that normal, everyday, "I'm late for work!" tension, and stick it right down deep inside your core, and you may begin to see how massive a task it is to convince yourself that you need these nerves to perform at your optimum level. Well, I assure you, in this department we were not found wanting.
We rowed the race of our lives yesterday. We knew we would have to, and in that last split second between when the flag dropped, and when our bodies kicked into action, all that we had learned from our coaches, our teammates, and most importantly, ourselves, allowed us to do just that. We can confidently say that Eton did the exact same thing.
No one ever really rows a perfect race. Not even in the Princess Elizabeth Cup Final at Henley-On-Thames in Oxfordshire, England. What was perfect about our race yesterday was the desire, the will, and the courage in both lanes of the course. We could not have been beaten by a classier group of guys. As I'm sure they would say for us, it was our privilege to race a crew that demanded nothing short of their best performance.
July 3rd, 2005, was a day that we will remember for the rest of our lives. It has been our greatest pleasure to compete under the leadership of some of the best coaches around, and with the support of so, so many. We would like to deeply thank everyone for the incredible opportunities provided to us throughout this memorable season. Best of luck to Prep Crew in years to come.

Sincerely,

the St. Joesph's Prep Varsity 9, 2005

Mark DelGuercio, Pat Dewechter, Brad Adams, Andrew Golda, Mike Lombardi, Mike Gennaro, Matt McGowan, Kenny Ewell, and John Connolly

Two Words

FINALS BABY!

Saturday's Race Info

Today we are racing St. Paul's School (U.K.) at 6:20 PM, which is 1:20 PM on the east coast, USA.  We'll keep ya posted.

 

-KENNY

Day 11 (Race Day 3)

Hey guys whats up? It was a big day for us today in Henley.  The day was filled with anxiety and mostly waiting around.  Everyone woke up around 9 and we all sat around and watched Friday Night Lights.  The movie was great and everyone was getting pumped up and ready for the quarter-final race today.  After Friday Night Lights ended, we decided that we wanted to see some "blood-shed" and so we watched a little Kill Bill Vol. 2 and everyone was ready to go.
We got down to the race course and everyone was determined to accomplish what we had to do.  It was finally race time, and we were all ready to go.  Pangbourne College jumped us off the line rowing 47 strokes per minute and got to an early lead.  We kept edging down the race course at our base, 34 strokes per minute, and they were slowly losing their lead and then finally Mark called a move and we slowly started to walk through them.  We got up about half a boat or so and that margin stayed about the same and we came pass the finish line with a 4 feet margin victory.  
We are now one of the four crews left in our event, and we will take on either St. Xavier or St. Paul's School in the semi-finals tomorrow, depending on who comes out on top between the two later today.  Now we are just chilling and watching Braveheart.  You'll hear from us soon, later guys!

Matt McGowan

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

Day 10 (Race Day 2)

Today is our tenth day 'cross the pond here in the town of Henley-on-Thames, and now with the sun just beginning to set behind the greenery in the Colemans' backyard I am on the family computer to update our Henley journal. While everyone here is getting ready for bed, all of you, our readers, are probably just getting home from work, or beginning to prepare dinner. Far from home we are, but the support we have been receiving from our Prep family has surely kept us connected to our roots, in the boathouse just south of Strawberry Mansion Bridge and we are very grateful for everyone's support. Now, onto the events that took place on 30 June 2005.

Today we woke up around 9:30 and performed our pre-race morning rituals: brushing teeth, eating breakfast (bagels, cereals, nothing too heavy), throwing our crimson unisuits in our backpacks, and in today's case, putting on a few extra layers for the cool weather that met us in the early hours of the day. We left the house in our Europcar around 10:15, taking into account the recent increase in morning traffic, as we generally plan to be in the boat tent about 90 minutes before race time. We shoved around 11:20 after stretching out and doing our daily sit-ups (200 of 'em!). For the second day in a row, we experienced sitting at the line next to a single crew, waiting for the umpire's launch to arrive so he could go over the starting commands with us in nothing less than a distinguished British accent: "When I see that both crews are aligned and ready, I will start you like this: Attention, GO!" We won our race today against Bedford Modern, but we all agreed that we didn't go our fastest. Woebegone, we decided to take a short swing row later in the afternoon during the Tea Break to sharpen up a bit. After our sharpening session, we were all more confident in our potential to reach our maximum speed. Needless to say, it went well. We will race at 2:40 PM tomorrow against Pangbourne College.

I've just been told that I have to get up to bed, so I'll leave you with a bit of information on our boat. Our boat is a rental, so there is no name on it. We have decided as a boat to name it after our classmates who have passed away during our time at the Prep, Patrick F. Monaghan and T. Patrick Byrnes. The boat name will read:

P.F.M. - T.P.B. '05

We will keep you posted. Look for another update tomorrow, 1 July 2005.

YEAH PREP!

-KENNY