For most people, Oct. 17 will roll around with the speed of any autumn Saturday. For Sonia Shjegstad, it will have come with all the speed of a warmup row at the paddle.
After four years of compiling a crew resumé that includes everything from club president to current team captain, Shjegstad will finally be able to add the title of Duke varsity rower.
With this weekend's Head of the Charles regatta in Boston as their first official varsity competition, Shjegstad and a group of six seniors are set to pilot the 45-rower team somewhere its never been before. And the rest of the squad is more than ready to follow.
"We have a real commitment to the team, present, future and where it's going," Shjegstad said. "We've invested a lot of time in keeping the team together and running over the years.
"[The move to varsity] is definitely something we've been building for. As a club team we were as competitive as some varsity teams. And now we've got a full-time coach, which has made a huge difference. [Coach Robyn Horner] has been getting psyched up and her excitement has been passed on to us-it's contagious."
Hopefully, her success will also be contagious. During a 14-year rowing career, Horner has captured two Collegiate National medals, national team selections, a No. 1 ranking as coach of Williams College in the Northeast Division II/III schools and a fifth-place Grand Final showing at the NCAA Championships last year with Williams. So far her enthusiasm, if nothing else, has carried over.
"She's been awesome so far, very productive," coxswain Lily Clark said. "She has a lot of really innovative ideas, and she's really done great things with this team. We have complete faith in her to make us a nationally competitive team shortly."
There will be no better testing grounds for this team's national competitiveness than the upcoming Head of the Charles. The nation's largest and most prestigious collegiate regatta, the 5,000-meter race will feature some of the nation's most elite crew teams, including the No. 2 nationally ranked 8+ boat of Northeastern and perennial power Minnesota.
Although the team is 45 members deep, the Head of the Charles will see just one varsity 8+ boat entered from Duke, a decision Horner made in September based on the maturity of her team.
"The 8+ is the biggest race there is," Horner said. "I felt like right now we really wouldn't be able to be competitive in other events in this regatta. We eventually will be successful in multiple categories, and we will have strong contributions from our novices, but right now I want to be sure everyone who competes is ready."
A strong base of senior leadership from Shjegstad and Katherine Peterson, the team's other co-captain, combined with the efforts of novice coach Shannon Daly, has helped to ease the transition for the first-year rowers. In a sport where 80 percent of the participants have no rowing experience before college, the swift development of the novices will play a key role in the inaugural season.
"Leadership is something we talked about before coming back and something we talked to [Horner] about-her wanting us to take responsibility and keeping the team focused," Shjegstad said. "So far things are running very smoothly, better than we'd hoped even. Then with Shannon, she's a really good coach for novices, energetic, outgoing, always trying to keep it light, but making sure they're learning."
A continued commitment to a more physically oriented training method has already shown results, yielding a 30-second drop over the simulated 6,000 meters in the second round of erg tests this week.
Such rapid improvements make a top-10 finish in the Head of the Charles, and top-five finishes in the upcoming Head of the Chattahoochee and the Head of the Tennessee, a real possibility.
"We've done very well at those races in the past," Shjegstad said of the more regional races at the Chattahoochee and the Tennessee. "We'll be racing against other teams just starting. In the Southeast, crew is a new sport, so we've got the talent to medal in both of those races, and maybe the Charles."
Although the immediate opponents of the crew team will be national powers, Shjegstad is concentrating on the team's development going into the newly formed ACC in the spring. Outside of national power Virginia, ranked No. 1 in the Southeast, the ACC will be a collection of three young programs.
Duke and Clemson are both in their first year and UNC is in its second. With such a wide-open ACC, Shjegstad hopes the commitment in the fall will soon pay off.
"We definitely have the tools we need, and we definitely have the strength," she said. "We just have to put it together mentally; it's something we can do. Everybody has made big improvements since last year, and we're just excited-excited about the race, excited about the entire season and excited about the year."
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