Hard work has become a mantra for the women's rowing team. Like distance runners, rowers often focus less on skill work and more on sheer grunt work, spending hour after hour on urging machines.
As head coach Robyn Horner explained, Duke crew can be a tedious day-to-day training existence.
"We spend time obviously to get their timing together and balance, and all that, and that's an important aspect of [rowing]," she said. "But as we've gotten stronger kids and increased their physiology and their physical levels are performance has gotten a lot better."
This upcoming spring season, however, could very well yield exciting accomplishments. Since its inception less than five years ago, every ACC Championship race has been won by Virginia. Last year Duke finished second, and with stagnation being a hated concept amongst athletes so dedicated to continually shaving off seconds, upcoming expectations are large.
"This is the first year that we've had a whole senior class," Horner said. "They finally have the experience they need and are ready to go.... Last year we finished second in the ACC Championships and this year we're really going to try to go after Virginia."
What makes the experience element so important is that it ushers in a new era of athleticism for the Blue Devils. While crew's daily training sessions often burn out many walk-ons that comprise its 43-member roster, the handful of full-time recruits that have joined the team each of the past four seasons fully accept rowing's physical and mental commitment.
With less burnout, Horner and her staff worry less about attrition of their side and more about what the team can accomplish, particularly the varsity-eight boat.
"As we've gotten better each year, at lot of that has to do with us being able to recruit better [athletes]," Horner said. "Our first class was 10 kids, but then as you add eight more kids here and five more there, it just makes a big difference in performance level."
As team prepares to dip its oars into the water for the first time in competition this weekend, Horner and her staff will begin to examine the shape of this year's Blue Devil squad, particularly its cohesive racing ability.
Although many might not appreciate its subtleties, live racing is much more skill intensive than simply taking a machine into the lake and rowing for a set amount of time. The starts of races, the periodical sprint dashes and especially the techniques used to maximize speed with every stroke become much larger issues as the season begins.
Horner said that she constructed the 2003 schedule to accommodate this learning process. The Blue Devils open up against lighter competition before facing four top-20 sides in a row during the end of spring.
"What we are doing as the season progresses is fine-tuning our racing skills," Horner said. "How we get off the starting line, setting up strategy for the race--the further competition levels get the more you try to focus in on those aspects of the race to try to pick up speed."
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