Crew Club
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2004-2005 SeasonBy Jessica Lambert
After a promising spring 2004 season, the ISU Crew Club came back in the fall with the drive to compete. This season the club started out the highest number of members to date. Practice started the last week in August and the first race was at the end of October. As with any rowing program, trying to teach someone how to row in a month and row with a crew is difficult. We had two months to see what the novices could do. Over half of the club were new members and had never set foot in a boat before.
As the season progressed and the Head of the Iowa coming up the new members were eager to see what a crew race was all about. We entered an eight into the Mixed Novice 8, and a four in the Mixed 4. The Mixed 4, comprised of Megan Sellheim, Dana Frits, Jeff Kloster, Michael Fuller, and Jason Franklin as cox came in 3 rd place, beating out 9 other crews, including crews from Minnesota, St. Cloud, Kansas, and Mendota. The Mixed Novice 8 included Jessica Lambert, Kiley Stavnes, Megan Birdsall, Natasha Bleimehl, Mandy Sadowski, Zach Brown, Matt Owens, Vishwa Somashekar, and Leah Benson as cox. Since this was a head race, the crew started in second position, behind Des Moines Rowing Club. Right from the start the crew started out strong and with each stroke they caught up with the crew from the DMRC. As they rounded the first turn of the course they had already caught up to the shell and each stroke they got further and further away from the boats behind them and from DMRC. At the end of the race the Mixed Novice 8 finished in 1 st place out of 4 boats and had crushed the 2 nd place boat by 1 min 30 seconds, and beat the 3 rd place boat by almost 2 minutes.
The second and final race of the fall season the club traveled to Wichita, Kansas for the Frostbite Regatta. The regatta proved somewhat difficult for the ISU Crew Club despite doing fairly well at the Head of the Iowa. ISU Crew has never competed at the Frostbite Regatta and had no idea what to expect from the course and from other universities. The Mens Lightweight 4 of Matt Solnitzky, Justin Gumm, Joel Dunham, Mike Fuller, and Jason Franklin as cox came in 4 th out of 7 crews with a time of 7:09 and the best place finish of the day for ISU Crew. The fun event of the day was the Mixed 8. ISU Crew had two shells competing in the race. Iowa State A with the brand new red K8, new oars, and more experienced rowers competed against Iowa State B. Iowa State B had a shell that some seats fell off the slides, mismatched oars, a cox who couldnt fit in the seat, and more novices compared to A. Despite all this, both crews had the best race of the day. Each crew wanted to beat the other ISU boat. But when the dust had settled, Iowa State B prevailed by 8 seconds over Iowa State A. It doesn’t happen very often where we can compete against ourselves in a race.
The spring season began after the last race of the fall season. Our club practices all through the winter to get ready for the spring season. With many returning rowers, our season started off with a lot of anticipation. The ISU Crew Club had a strong showing at the Upper Midwest Collegiate Sprints in Omaha even though we only brought home 1 medal. The Lightweight Mens 4 brought home the silver medal with Joel Dunham, Mike Woolley, Matt Solnizky, Megan Sellheim, and Leah Benson as cox.
The next weekend proved to be our best showing of the season. It was time for the 3 rd annual Cy-Hawk regatta in Iowa City. The winners would win the Cy-Hawk oar and have bragging rights for the next year. With Matt Solnitzky at stroke, Patrick Blunt at 3 seat, Jeff Kloster at 2 seat, Joel Dunham at bow, and Leah Benson as the coxswain, the first race of the day was the most exciting race of the three races. As the two crews were coming around the bend it was neck and neck. But at the finish the Cyclones were to strong for the Hawkeyes and beat them by less then a second. We just had to win one more race and the oar would go back to Ames. During the second race, the Hawkeyes were not going to give up and beat us by over a boat length. Both teams knew they had to win the third race. As the boats took off from the dock all the spectators were anxiously waiting at the finish. As the crew came around the bend the Hawks knew that the oar would be going back to Ames for the second year in a row and the second time out of the three year event.
Our next and last race of the season would be the Midwest Rowing Championships in Madison. The first shell of the regatta went out, but they had to come back in due to it being to windy. A shell had already capsized and it was too dangerous to go out.
The end of another successful year came to a close at the annual crew banquet held on April 28, 2005. It was held at the Olde Main. Megan Sellheim received female rower of the year. Leah Benson received best coxswain and Matt Owens received best male rower. It was sad to see another year gone, but everyone already had their minds on the following fall.
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