Langley is well known in the crew world for their many accomplishments in the sport, but this season, the underdogs of Langley crew are best representing the school. The other Langley boats were off to a slow start this season, not winning events until for some, the fourth regatta. The men’s freshmen team really got the ball rolling for Langley this season.
Before the race even began, the men already had the mindset to support their team. They watched the men’s novice four, who they learned the fundamentals of the sport with, show tremendous effort to come back in their race. And then they hiked twenty minutes back to the boat house to begin the mental preparation for their own race. The first two regattas of the season were cancelled before the novice members could race, causing a lot of indecision before the race even though they had been practicing for months.
“[Coach Matt] told us that we were expected to at least place in the race, but he didn’t mention that we needed to win,” said coxswain Thomas Lui. “After the race, he said that we did fine. There is always room for improvement.”
The mantra of most Langley coxswains is to think about all of the hard work that they put in during winter training, and they did put in hard work for the victory. You could find the men’s novice crew team after school in the science hallway doing ab circuits and erging into the evening, from November to March. When asked, one of the power rowers of the boat, Mason Liddell described winter training as, “basically a nightmare on the erg.”
The race itself was a nail biter. The boat was not prepared to start, and they ended up starting a few seconds after all of the other boats.
“When we finally got set, we didn’t hear the referee say ‘ready and go’ and so we weren’t ready to go, George was still taking a backing stroke when we had to start rowing,” said Lui.
Their main competition in the race was Yorktown. “[Coach] told us that Yorktown has a strong boat, they are powerful, and their freshmen are tall, so we tried to beat them,” said Lui.
But even then it looked like Langley wasn’t going to win. In the last 30 seconds of the race, the Yorktown boat caught up to Langley. “When we thought we were ready to sprint, we all yelled Hail Saxons,” said Lui. Langley pulled through and sprinted the last 200 meters to win the race by four seconds.
The blue ribbon wasn’t the only good thing that came from this race. The freshmen team established themselves as able rowers. “It feels nice to have won, but it feels better to be the only boat to have won because varsity is always getting inside of the Novice members’ heads, like we are never really going to accomplish anything, and then we get up there and take a blue ribbon.” said Liddell, very satisfied with his boat’s win.
“From stroke seat to bow seat, everyone is equally important, and equally responsible for the win,” concluded Lui, obviously proud of the boat that overcame obstacles for an important victory for Langley.