A number of Billygoats Society members have wondered how the Boat Club is coping with the limitations imposed by the current situation. Tony Moule circulates a Boatman’s Report to the Committee and he included a summary of the term’s rowing which he has kindly agreed to let me post here. Tony writes:
Michaelmas Term has been like no other; I have changed my role slightly to enable the club to stay Covid safe, mainly for the first 2 – 3 weeks of term. Less coaching initially, but did manage to get back coaching more in the second half of October. It became more of a management role to ensure we kept the club working under the strict guidelines, keeping the club Covid safe for all. This year has been a great challenge to us all, when we’ve been able to row and open the club again we have done so in a very secure and safe approach, setting out the Covid secure systems. Andrew Salkeld (Boat Club Junior Safety Officer) has done a sterling job of keeping up-to-date with the protocols and guidance, I’ve worked with him to ensure this has been a seamless approach. Alan Fuller (the domestic bursar) has also been a great help in supporting our getting back to rowing.
This year’s committee faced a daunting task of providing a meaningful experience for the members whilst keeping Covid safe and within the guidelines, which I feel to date has been done very well.
Novices and Inductions: We had a great virtual sign up to rowing this year, which presented its own issues. Un-phased by having surprisingly many that wanted to try rowing, we had a meeting as to how we were going to approach this year. We inducted and boated 78 students on the Come and Try days all in 2s. Two arriving every 20 minutes, starting on the ergs (in boathouse), then in bank tub and in the Tub Pair, each taking around 1.25 hours to rotate through, I spent 20/30 minutes with every pair. The Tub Pair was up and down the river like a yoyo, which was great. It went fantastically well, certainly a model for future years, (so if anything good has come out of the restrictions, this is it). This made it easier to spot talent and to give much more one to one coaching. Whilst it took longer to run the sessions, we did save time when then moving into bigger boats. We did more tubbing after the Come and Try which helped considerably too. I believe we should increase the level of tubbing generally. (We did borrow Cambridge 99’s tub too, which has also helped).
The lower boat captains managed the novices very well, the set up on the Come and Try days was excellent, embracing the new system. The progression during October was significant that I noticed, and the term progressed very well until we had to stop early in November, which was a great shame.
I suggest that we could have a great novice squad in the new year, different to a usual year obviously as they are a month behind now, but I’m sure they won’t take long to progress significantly given the great start they had. For the Lent Term I’ve suggested we almost give the novices a restart, more tubbing for the first week or two.
Senior Squads: this term was good in numbers of seniors and a few new first years with sculling experience meant that we had a decent sized squad training. We decided to use the term to keep the seniors mainly in small boats this enabled us to upskill the squads and this was proving very useful as there is quite a significant variance in ability through the senior squad.
I remain hopeful we can have a good senior squad on both the men’s and women’s sides when we are able to get back to competitive rowing. I have written to the secretary of the CUCBC to get his view on the possible chances to holding a possible Head style race next term, I suggested ‘Head of the Lents’ set of races for the Lent term given that probably the Lent Bumps will not go ahead in its normal form.
As usual I have to thank our Billygoat coaches, Alex Markham, Alan Marron, Joao d’Avila who have helped considerably during the term. Many of the senior members having given a lot of time to coach the novice boats, so thanks to them, in particular Andre (Neto-Bradley, last year’s captain) who has been coaching, cox coaching and coxing himself on many occasions.
No Fitz crews have raced (or will race) this term.