BURNABY LAKE PARK (Oct. 5, 2024) — UFV Rowing continued through race season with another gritty and determined effort early this month at the Western Canadian University Rowing Championships. Competing in small boat competition and in women’s composite eights with SFU, the Cascades had a respectable showing considering the field of competition.
Sophia Halas placed third in the Women’s JV 1x category, and was quick to credit her mentors after her race. “We have amazing coaches, Lisa and Alicia. They’re awesome,” said Halas, noting the training regime in place by the staff has pushed the athletes to new heights.
Aaron Hyde’s approach to the race involves only what’s in his control. “We go into it pretty loose. If we’re able to beat one of those boats, [it’s a] huge win for us,” he said.
Former Olympic gold medalist and current coach at UFV, Lisa Roman is in her third year with the program. “UVic and UBC are two of the top schools, so coming out here to compete is hard for us,” said Roman. She sees value in the process though. “It shows where we need to be if we want to be super competitive. That’s important.”
Against top-tier rowing programs, UFV has ground to make up. Roman explained, “95 per cent of [our] athletes are walk-ons, so most people don’t have any experience.” She explained that “most of UBC’s athletes have had previous rowing, so it’s just a different ball game. Not that we can’t be competitive, because we have been already.”
While everyone wants a positive result in the final placements, Roman said it’s important to keep perspective. “We have to remember that we’ve only really been running the program for three years, and it really would take somebody that doesn’t know rowing about four to five years to really be competitive.” She thinks in the next two or three years, when athletes have been around the system and racing for multiple cycles, UFV can actually start to stand out and be a competitive rowing program.
What is Roman looking for in the present, then? “Just seeing them come down the course and have the confidence to be in the race. That’s what I’m looking for,” said Roman. “We’ve done a really good job of creating more of a squad. It’s fun to see all the other athletes come out and support and be there and help people take down boats.”
Roman enjoys the bond that her rowers have. “All of our athletes tend to hang out with each other. They do things together. You don’t see that very often in varsity programs. They rally each other on and I really enjoy that.” As a former athlete, Roman is focused on “trying to provide an opportunity for people to have an experience,” as opposed to strictly pursuing athletic excellence at all costs.
Coach Alicia Borsoi expressed similar sentiments. “Rowing is very much a pattern; it’s a three part pattern, forward and backward,” said Borsoi. “A huge part of keeping your connection and power to transfer from your body to your oars, holding your body over in the mid part of the stroke. That’s actually quite a challenging thing to achieve consistently; it’s natural for people to want to open their bodies, and then it just ends up pushing the boat down and slowing down.” On her team’s rowing, she said, “I was really happy with what I saw in practice yesterday and then how it transferred today. In their race scenario, the men’s double had excellent form under fatigue and even though they were really fighting from behind, the habit is usually to lose that body over, and they were both holding that very well.”
Hyde documented the biggest challenge of the race as, “Around the 1500 metre [mark] you don’t think you can go anymore, and you just have to find a way. You have to put it even harder in the last bit, and you really don’t want to. It’s part of the sport; it’s what the sport is really like.” He explained, “There’s a lot of development there. You figure out how to do it, you push and you don’t think you can anymore. It’s a really cool feeling at the end looking back at it. In the middle it’s like, this is horrible, but it’s always fun at the end to look back and see what we were actually able to do, and start comparing it to our races before.”
Long-time rower Peter Inden described what it’s been like teaming up with SFU. “[They’re] at a similar stage as us; they’re trying to develop their team.” Inden said it’s nice to have competition within their own range of experience. “We’ve got potential, and we just need to build it up.”
UFV Rowing is currently preparing for the Canadian University Rowing Championships at Elk Lake in Victoria this Nov. 1-3, 2024.
