Broxbourne Rowing Club

Welcome to the Broxbourne Senior Women’s page! The Senior Women’s squad varies in size from season to season, but currently sits at around 16 women. Across the group there is a range of abilities and ages. We also have a large spread of points from novices through to people with up to 7 points. So, from across the squad we can enter a broad range of events at different levels. Over the last season, we have also been working very closely with the Intermediate Women and older to Juniors to encourage transition up in to the Senior squad, or down for those who are no longer able to commit as much as they would like.


Some key events for the top end of the squad are the main Tideway heads (Pairs, Fours and Women’s Eights) and the major regattas such as Wallingford, Met and Henley. However, we still turn-out in force to more local events such as St Neots, Sudbury and Peterborough, allowing lower pointing crews to get in some good racing and wins. Over recent years, the squad has had a lot of success at many events, the most prestigious of those being first BRC boat at the 2008 Eights Head of the River winning the Provincial Pennant.


Every spring, as the squad transitions from head racing in to regatta racing, we try and attend a training camp. This helps to re-focus the mind for the summer ahead and assist in summer crew selection.


Our main training days are Monday evenings, and Saturday and Sunday mornings on the water, with the option of additional water sessions or circuits on Thursdays. We encourage all members to scull and learn to steer to make the squad as flexible as possible and broaden the rowing experience.

If you have some rowing experience please come along and see us. We can cater for everyone and would love to meet you!

Angela Watling

Senior Women’s Vice Captain

Sudbury International Regatta – 6th August
There were 9 wins for the club

• Masters G4+ (Tony Stokes, Nick Carter, Hugo Van Kempen, Jim Brandon and Alex Carter)
• Masters C 1x (Chris Heathcote)
• Women’s Masters A Novice 4+ ( Susi Bassam, Penny Churchill, Crista Findell, Jen Bradley, Oli James)
• Masters B 1x (Quintin McKellar)
• Women’s J17 1x (Rowan McKellar)
• Women’s Novice 4+ (Ellie Holmes, Rachel Harris, Ashley King, Charlotte Page, Oli James)
• Novice 1x (Chris Heathcote)
• Mixed IM2 X (Tom Jenkins, Rowan McKellar)
• Masters E 1x (Jonathan Batley)

Peterborough Summer Regatta – 13th August
There were 5 wins for the club

• Masters B 4+ (Becky Bishop, Susi Bassam, Jen Bradley, Crista Findell, Anne Lacy)
• Women’s Novice 4+ (Belinda Seabrook, Emma Lacy, Daisy Kitchener, Cally Gentle, Callum Costello)
• Women’s IM3.4x (Alexandra Gibson, Amy Thornber, Sarah Gilliver and Lizzie Alexander)
• Novice 8+ (Amanda Jones, Ian Henley, Nick Murray, Mansour Eskandarzadeh, Tim Isitt, Mark Edgley, Graham Lavender, Robert Lamprell, Matthew Harris)
• IM1 1x (Craig Allan)

Well done everyone!

The Intermediate and Novice Ladies are off to Bedford tomorrow. With a WNov.4+, WIM3.4+ and WIM3.8+, we have some strong crews taking to the water. Best of luck to everyone racing!

Hi All,

The members of the Senior Women’s squad who are competing for a seat in a Henley crew this year will be doing a 2k test tomorrow. I have agreed with the Rowing Committee that the Senior Women can have exclusive use of the gym between 7pm and 7:30pm on Thursday 21 April 2011 for this test.

This 2k test will be a key to helping decide crew line-ups for one of our Wallingford crews. So please can I ask all club members to respect this 30min session and to not disturb the girls whilst they are doing their test.

Thank-you for your understanding.

Angela

The women turned up the training and showed up the men in December. Belinda and Amy pushed the standards to a new level with Belinda taking the top spot with a very narrow margin. Rowan Mckellar did well to take third place, but will struggle to keep it, now Louise Morris is back on the ergo. Adam Ridler topped the men’s list again. Results are in the members section.


Apologies for the late posting of the list. The January list will go up next week and I won’t be chasing people for scores. I’ve already seen some big scores from the men’s side and competition for HORR boats is heating up.

So, I am long overdue a report on the website, but better late than never! The Senior Women started the season with the arrival of Matt as our coach. We also welcomed Alex Gibson to the squad and welcomed back Amy full time after the arrival of little Fiona in May. Matt’s plan for us was to go back to basics and re-build our entire stroke whilst working at rate 20, which for us was a bit of a shock. But, we started doing it in the boat and on the erg. After a few weeks of adapting to the rate, everyone started to settle in. Initially the outings got worse instead of better, but with so many people working on improving individually, it was to be expected. However, by the beginning of October we were starting to make progress and get the occasional compliment from some of Broxbourne’s harsher critics!

At the start of October, we addressed Fours Head. The hope had been to get 3 crew, the entire squad, out racing. However due to various availability conflicts, we settled on a single WIM1 coxless fours crew of Sarah Gilliver, Lizzie Alexander and Alex Gibson who were joined by Rowan McKellar from the junior squad. The crew regularly got out on the water and worked very hard to get back accustomed to race ratings without losing their form. On race day, the girls came last in their division but, more importantly, they had a solid row where they kept holding the new technique Matt had taught us. This was the key objective of this race because we were only 10 weeks in to a new training programme. Well done girls – a great acheivement!

Whilst the other fours head crews didn’t quite come to fruition, two other squad members were keen to race still – Julia Burden and Charlotte Willett. So, they joined forces with Jane Taylor and Joanna Pardoe from the Intermediate Women to race a WIM3 coxed four at Veterans Fours Head. Despite being a fairly late forming crew, the quartet, along with their cox Will Taylor and their coach Stuart Burden, put in a lot of training effort and really got the boat moving by the time of the race. They also had a great race and came 9th out of 12 in their category. They were close to crews 7 and 8 though and may have placed higher if Charlotte hadn’t suffered a loose rigger bolt.

Since Fours and Vets Fours, the squad have continue to work on their weekly 30 min ergos and consolidating everything Matt has been teaching us about the stroke. A WIM1.8+ was due to race at Wallingford on Sunday 5 December. However, after all of the other Broxbourne crews scratched and with the horrible weather predicitions, the crew also scratched. The race was replaced by a 12k outing at the club with 4.5k at rate 33 in the middle. This was one of the few occassions we had done such a distance at a higher rate since September. The pieces, whilst not perfect, went really well and helped reassure many of us that we were indeed heading in the right direction.

So, slow and steady progress for the Senior Women for this part of the season. Despite suffering quite a lot of colds and other injuries, we have been making improvements on and off the water. We are now re-assessing where we are ready to re-focus for the New Year and Eights Head!

(p.s. If anyone has any Fours Head and Vets Head pics then send them to me so I can include them – ta!)