Sooners Impressive at Scrimmage

March 12, 2009

NORMAN, Okla.--The University of Oklahoma rowing team took to the water Saturday to kick off the 2009 spring racing season with a scrimmage against the University of Central Oklahoma. The racing began at 8 a.m. and teams competed in a series of five-minute pieces with ratings capped at 28 strokes per minute.

OU raced four boats - a varsity four, first novice eight, second novice eight, and a novice four. At the start of the first piece of the day, UCO had equipment breakage and had to return to the dock. The OU V4+ chose to jump in to race with the eights in the first three pieces. The top novice boat for Oklahoma won two of three against the Bronchos varsity eight, while the OU second novice eight claimed victories in all three pieces versus UCO's first novice eight.

"It was a good opportunity to race, figure out what we did well, what we needed to improve, and then race again right away," OU novice coach Andy Derrick said. "We learned a lot more this way, and I think it went a long way towards getting our young team ready to face some stiff competition down in Austin in two weeks."

After a short break following the eights races, OU and UCO returned to the water for dual competition in the fours. The most impressive performance of the day came from OU's varsity 4+, who won all of their pieces by convincing margins. The OU novice four also performed well, winning all three races.

Head Coach Leeanne Crain was pleased with the performance of her team.

"It's always good to get out and face some competition in the early season," said Crain. "The team has been training hard all winter, and it's nice to see the hard work paying off on the race course. We have a great set-up here with the three local college teams - UCO, OCU and OU. It benefits us all to have each other around."

University of Oklahoma Athletics

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