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This weekend, Rowing BC hosted another successful Junior Development Camp. The “Winter Camp” was an opportunity to build on the knowledge from the series of Junior Development Camps executed by Rowing BC’s Director of High Performance, Terry Paul. The camp was hosted at the BC NextGen Performance Center at Elk Lake and supported by coaches Terry Paul and Rene Gonin.The Winter Camp was held for selected Junior athletes with the goal of building a Women’s and Men’s 8+ looking to compete as exhibition crews at the Elk Lake Spring Regatta against the University crews.

The purpose of the camp is to encourage the engagement of motivated coaches and athletes by bringing them together to share experiences and to feel the speed of faster boats. The process of this engagement has helped the athletes realize they have the possibility of producing BC provincial project crews to work toward the RCA Junior National Team Trials in the spring. Rowing Canada has implemented a trials based Junior National Team selection model which would give club, local, regional or provincial Junior project crews more runway to select and prepare crews for this summer’s “Mega Worlds” in St. Catharines. 

The camp started  on Friday afternoon with a general meeting and short on water session in big boats. After the session, the group completed some physiological tests on the C2 ergometer of 1000 meters at stroke rate 24 measuring aerobic power and comparing their results to those of the November camp scores to monitor improvements. 

Saturday was a busy day with three rowing sessions that mixed crews around and switched athletes in crews to assess potential lineups for the 8+s. Lots of technical themes were shared and many new drills were introduced. One athlete, Quinn McCoy commented, “ it’s been really fun rowing with the people from different programs and hearing different voices. It’s been great to see the progress of the crew since we started these camps in the fall.”

On Sunday sessions were all about race preparation. The plan was to have a pre-race outing that rehearsed race day routines followed by a rest, and then a mid day race session of 2 x 1500 meters. Performances of the handicap style head to head racing would be measured against respective gold Medal standards to assess boatspeed comparisons against each other. Sadly, the winter fog prevented us from rowing but we did have lots of time for group discussions and planning for race day routines, pre-race warm ups and race planning. 

Special thanks to the Blue and Marcovitz families for billeting our athletes from out of town who came from Vernon and Salmon Arm.

Also in January, Rowing BC facilitated or hosted many successful workshops for coaches. These included Making Ethical Decisions, Bystand Intervention Training, and RCA Learn to Row Coach Workshop.

The LTR Coach workshop was held at the Nicomekl Rowing Club and facililtated by Rowing BC’s Manager of Education, Innovation, and Inclusion, Lisa Tschannen. Participants from the lower mainland were enthusiastic and enjoyed the in-person learning experience.

February will be even busier. Be sure to check the Rowing BC Events Calendar for more information.

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