Every point counts. They add up to the difference at the end of the day. So it was in her team’s best interest that Kris Sanford would disregard all rosters, start from the scratch for the last meet of the season.

‘We were looking at it from the standpoint of points. The second Varsity Four was worth more than the novice four (at the Big East Championships),’ the Syracuse’s women’s rowing team head coach said. ‘We just planned to figure out what we needed to do to make the first (varsity) four faster, and that meant switching things up.’

Before the end of last week, lineups for the all boats expect the Varsity Eight were rewritten. The results? The Orange came in with 92 points at the Big East championships Sunday, finishing in third place for the third consecutive year, behind Notre Dame (123 points) and Louisville (105 points).

SU’s highest individual finishes of the day came from the Varsity Four (7:59.25) and second varsity four (7:58.38), both of which finished second.

Zaula Usman knew her second Varsity Four stood a chance, that moving freshmen up would bring greater all-around power and strength to the crew.

And SU came close, rowing past the four other crews to compete solely with Notre Dame.

‘(The second Varsity Four) was with Notre Dame for maybe the first 1,000 meters, but the last 1,000 they made a move on us,’ the senior Usman said. ‘With all our might we just couldn’t row past them. They were stronger, and that’s something we couldn’t do anything about.’

Sanford understood the disappointment of not being fast enough to capture the place a boat was looking for, but the crews still showed courage, she said.

‘The crews rowed at above their racing pace,’ Sanford said.

After watching each boat row in two races – a qualifying preliminary heat and then a final – Sanford noticed that crews saved their sprints for the final race.

‘In the last 500 meters, people didn’t sprint,’ Sanford said. ‘As long as you were in a comfortable qualifying position, your rowers didn’t have to row as hard as they do.’

But it didn’t change the fact that the Varsity Eight rowed with a higher stroke rate per minute than previous races, that the young crews showed courage by ‘throwing it all on the line.’

‘I think that they gave all that they could today, to be as fast as they were,’ Sanford said.

Against six opponents with calm conditions despite the hard rain, Theresa Alessio saw the build-up of confidence in her crew knowing that second Varsity Eight had improved.

The lineup change at the end of SU’s regular season didn’t detract from the chemistry of the boats.

The new boat roster had put the senior in the stroke seat, and unlike the week before when the second Varsity Eight went with a cold lineup, where the boat had never practiced or raced together before, Alessio had time to work with her new row mates.

‘We concentrated on working on rhythm,’ Alessio said. ‘There was less of a rush, more of a relax where we could concentrate on the race.’

Though Sanford could not see the entire race standing at the shore of Melton Hill Lake in Oak Ridge, Tenn., she still noticed the newest freshman and the new lineups could only get faster after their results this past Sunday. Rewriting the lineup had been worth it.

‘We had a very solid first four and second four, so we got more points,’ Sanford said.

‘I give them a lot of credit because they were enjoying what they had to do, and I think that it shows maturity in the crew, a young crew.’

edpaik@syr.edu

Published on April 30, 2008 at 12:00 pm