As one of the newest club sports at Fairfield, the men’s crew team looks to it’s novice squad as future leaders and as a possible foundation for a competitve program.
This year’s team is led by tri-captains, Jeff Dunn, ’05, Brian Labelle, ’05 and Frank Marx, 04′. With strong varsity and novice boats, this year’s team looks to prove that hard work does pay off.
Sunday’s regatta showcased the team’s improvement and training during the summer and preseason and as a result, this dedicated team’s efforts have begun to pay off.
The varsity teams rowed strongly in their respective races but it was the Novice four boat that stole the show.
The novice boat, coached by Jim Heneghan, is off to an incredibly strong start. Manned by Michael Barwinski, ’04, Devlin O’Shea,’05, Chris Pioli, ’06, Ryan Togias, ’06, and coxswain, Katie Mahoney,’05, they rowed to a first place finish in Sunday’s race. The finishing time was18:53.
These rowers are the newest additions to the team and their first place finish has the experienced rowers expressing much enthusiasm.
“This team has come a long way since day one this year. Our novice team is as strong of a group as our program has ever had, showing a lot of potential to help take our program to the next level,” said J.J. Nesheiwat,’05.
Connor Dowling, ’04,a former football player, added that many of the freshmen had experience coming in, which helped the strength of the team.
“It’s been a great year so far. We have a really talented group of freshman, some with high school [rowing] experience which really adds to the depth of our team,” said Dowling.
The men’s crew team represented the Stags well in all of its races.
The Lightweight four boat placed second. The junior varsity eight boat raced to a third place finish.
The two additional novice boats, though didn’t place high, received important racing experience and used their time to hone their skills.
“We expect to see continued success for the novice boat, they have had a strong start and we will continue to integrate them into our team to make us stronger.” Marx commented.
As far as upcoming races, the biggest race of the season is the Head of the Charles. In this race, Fairfield will be one of many teams, some among the best in the country.
One of the most famous Regatta’s is scheduled for this weekend, and the team would like nothing more than to put forth its best performance at that event.
“[The Head of the Charles race] is more about all the hard work we have put in the season paying off because it is such a high caliber event,”said Marx.
“We can gage ourselves against some of the best teams [in the country], as the satisfaction of doing well in such a prestigious race” stated Marx.
As far as goals for the team, Dowling states that is all about setting personal goals.
“We do the best we can from race to race. We have a small program so we set personal goals and do our best to meet them,” said Dowling.
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