Rowing teams battle headwinds, other boats in season-opening Music City regatta
10/10/2023 6:24:00 PM | Rowing
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Liberty's experienced rowers took to the waters of the Cumberland River for their first 5,000-meter races of the season on Saturday in Nashville, Tenn.
With the Nashville, Tenn., skyline serving as an inspiring backdrop along the Cumberland River, several of the top returning rowers on Liberty University's rowing team showcased their strength, endurance, and synchronicity in the water for the first time in competition this fall during the 5,000-meter events in Saturday's Music City Head Race.
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Liberty's women's varsity 8 boat takes off from the dock with Nashville looming behind.
"It was fantastic," Liberty Head Coach Debbie Prowse said. "It was sunny and warmed up nicely, and it was a really good day overall, with lots of fun."
The Flames and Lady Flames held their own against fellow collegiate club crews from Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, Vanderbilt, Illinois, Murray State, Northwestern, Virginia Tech, and Wichita State, among others.
"I was pretty pleased with how we did," Prowse said. "Getting out for the first race of the year is always exciting, especially traveling and all of the logistics that go with it. Any time you go on the road, it's always a good time for bonding and the team did a great job. We only took experienced rowers on this trip, who know how to rig and derig the boats, and to put them in the trailer, and all of that went smoothly."
Liberty's men's double, sculled by sophomores Kyle Meeker and Gideon Abbott, earned a silver medal for completing the 5K course in 23 minutes, 11.4 seconds.
Meanwhile, the Lady Flames' varsity 8 and varsity 4 boats both placed in the top half of their respective fields, with the women's 8 crew finishing fourth out of eight in 19:16.9 and the women's 4 crossing the finish line eighth out of 16 in 22:08.4 battling against some strong wind gusts.
"Even going with the current, you had to push against a headwind," Prowse said. "We were used to rowing in the morning on the (Smith Mountain) Lake, which is usually pretty flat water, so having to navigate those waves where we haven't been tested yet this year made it pretty tricky."
Flames junior team captain John Bailey sculled his men's open single to a seventh-place showing out of 11 competitors in 20:31.3 and the men's varsity 4 finished 12th out of 15 boats in 21:21.2.
"The men's varsity 4 was going around a buoy between two other boats and kind of got squeezed over into the Tennessee boat, which was overtaking us," Prowse said. "There was no room for us to yield because we had a buoy and an IUPUI boat on the other side of us, so we clashed oars and that slowed our momentum down."
Liberty will take its complete squad with seven boats — two men's singles, a men's varsity 4, a men's Novice 4, a women's varsity 8, a women's novice 8, and a women's varsity 4 — to the Richmond Chase on Oct. 29 and again at Head of the South on the Savannah River in Augusta, Ga., on Nov. 11.
