Rowers Narrow Gap Against Duke

As North Carolina's rowing team packed up Saturday after racing Duke at University Lake, one would have thought it was the Tar Heels which had beaten the Blue Devils in all five events and 14 of 15 pieces, rather than the other way around.

Coach Joel Furtek sidestepped a stampede of cheery rowers and explained, "Don't try to get between novices and donuts."

Furtek said the Tar Heels are vastly better now than they were in the fall, when they also lost every event to Duke.

"We're never going to come off the water and be happy when we lose," he said. "We're not those type of people. We're not going to say, 'yay.' But as coach I have to be positive. We're going to see Duke again, and we're within striking distance now.

"We're much more competitive. In the fall we were not competitive. Since January we've turned the team around 180 degrees."

Because UNC and Duke raced in an unusual format Saturday, with three one-kilometer "pieces" comprising each race, it was difficult to compare results with last fall.

But the team consensus was that the Tar Heels were a lot closer this time.

"We came in thinking we could maybe beat them," said Kelley Gates, coxswain of the second varsity eight. "We've come a long way. We were maybe more powerful than Duke today but not as technically efficient. We weren't in race mode at the beginning. I think if we had another piece we could beat them. Our learning curve is going to be really steep."

Many of UNC's rowers spent the fall semester abroad, and varsity eight stroker Layne Carey said it helped to have the whole team back.

"We went pretty fast considering we have a lot to learn," she said.

The highlight of the day for UNC was the novice-four race. In the first piece, the Tar Heels lost by nearly 10 seconds. North Carolina lost the second piece by less than three seconds but won the third by 2 12.

"The novices were exceptional because our women are overwhelmingly novice," Furtek said.

Furtek explained that Duke recruits more heavily than UNC, and many of its novice rowers had high school experience. Further, Duke's novices entered races in the fall, while UNC's only trained.

"As the pieces went on they slowed down and we sped up," said UNC assistant coach Jackie Breitenstein. "A heavier warm-up might have made us faster for the first pieces."

The novices would be faster still had their strongest rower not been pulled up to a varsity boat. Varsity has just enough rowers to fill its two boats of eight; UNC doesn't enter a varsity-four boat.

"We have a lot of speed to be had -- free speed that we just need to tap into with better technique," Breitenstein said. "We missed some water and caught some crabs - some very novice mistakes. This was not an indication of our speed right now.

"But the whole point of today was to get on the water and get experience. Up in Michigan and Wisconsin, they're frozen over right now."

The Sports Editor can be reached at sports@unc.edu.