Gainesville Area Rowing had a very successful weekend at The Hooch in Chattanooga, Tennessee!
We had at least eighteen entries over the weekend and our Youth Rowers and our Master Rowers made GAR very proud. The weather was excellent, and the community very welcoming and accommodating to all who attended, what ended up being a record attendance at The Hooch!
Our Youth Rowers placed First (Gold) in the Mixed Youth 8+ race! Our Masters placed First (Gold) in the Mixed Open 2X. Jen Figueroa, our Sculling Coach and Master Rower, received a Silver Medal in the Women’s Master 1X race and was only 3/10′s of one second from Gold! With some races having almost 50 entries (competitors) our Youth were within 30 seconds or less off of the first place time in some races. Great job!
With continued training, I am looking forward to a very successful end to the Head Racing season this Fall and an even more successful Sprint Season in the Spring! Coaches, thank you all for your dedication to this club and to our youth and their success!
And, well, we had quite an exciting trip home yesterday – one of our buses broke down and we had to combine two buses into one bus for a six hour ride home. I want to thank everyone for their understanding, cooperation, and their excellent sense of humor during this “crunch” in getting all of us home safely and not very late, considering the circumstances. Our “Novice” parents learned what it means to be GAR family – everyone was such a good sport about this and we got to know each other very well!
I want to thank everyone for all of their help this weekend setting up and taking down, serving at the food tent and dinners, and chaperoning the rowers and the halls on both nights. Thanks to Mike Driscoll for driving the food trailer up to Chattanooga and Nina and Tom Cornwell for organizing the food tent for the weekend. This is truly a team effort so thank you again, all of you, for your help with anything that was needed!