After a year’s absence from the position, I, Joseph Berger, have been elected to return to the position of Public Relations for Charleston Crew. I look forward to reporting our successes as well as softening our defeats with shady reasoning and outright lying.
College of Charleston’s Rowing Club traveled to Augusta, GA for this years Head of the South. We stayed at the lovely home of Tripp Stanton. Tripp is dating Gwen.. Awkward/kinda cute turtle…
The day started out with Hank Hays placing fourth in the Championship Single, some bro from VCU won. Apparently you get a plate if you win. I want that plate. In any case, Hank did a lot better in his Open 2- race with the magnificently dressed and ever-smiling Justin Edgar.
The novice squad is huge this year. In fact, the whole team is a lot bigger. Apparently under the Captaincy of Emily Gooding & Joseph Berger (that’s me), the team doubled.. Anywho, the Novice Women put out 3 whole Eights. They placed 4th, 6th, and 13th. Later on in the day they placed 12th, 14th, and 19th (out of like a bigillion boats) in the Novice Women’s 4+. Kelby Ledford made sure later on to inform me that she like pulls like really hard. Good job ladies!
Then, the Lightweight Varsity Men went out. Result- BEAST MODE. The 1st 4+ (Berger, Rein, Bailey, Stockdale, & Kotz) won with the fastest time of any 4+ that day and the 2nd 4+ (Stanton, Candea, Tipling, Coppotelli, & Luck) took the bronze medal. Clemson seemed pretty bummed afterwards, as did VCU. This is the third year in a row that we’ve won this event. Hat Trick!
The Varsity Women went out in the Club 8+ with the Lovely Summer Landrith at stroke. They placed 5th. Take that, Clemson B-boat! Btw, my sister was in the Liberty University boat that got 2nd in this event. O’Berger Rules!
The Novice Men are pretty cool this year. Not quite “Stallion” status yet (kudos if you know of the infamous group of frosh men known as the Stallions), but they have time. They put out three 4+s in the Novice Four. They placed 3rd, 4th, and 11th. The 2nd 4+ actually placed 3rd above the the 1st 4+. Rumor has it it was because Sterling wasn’t pulling hard enough.. Hitting a dock and nearly running aground probably didn’t help either… Anyways, great showing for a group of Novice men that show a Lot of potential. Oh yeah, they got 5th later on in the Novice 8+
Travis Landrith stroked a Men’s Club 8+ that placed 5th out of 8. Not too shaby for a boat that never practiced beforehand.
The Women’s Lightweight 4+ (Gwen, Erin, Emily, Courtney, & Izzy) Crushed all of their competitors and won their event. They beasted so hard that they passed our hometown amigos at Charleston Community Rowing Clubs rowing in the Masters 4. Said Emily Gooding, “It was Literally the best row of my entire life.”
The day ended with the Varsity Lightweight men going back out onto the water for the Championship Eight. It was a bit rough, but with Ellie’s awesome steering we pulled through to victory. We won last year too. Pretty awesome right? Said Liberty’s stroke, “Wait, you guys are lightweights? Y’all don’t look lightweight.”
A successful end to a successful season. Now we’re deep into winter training. It’s not much fun, but when we come out in the spring, we gonna be STRONG. Watch out for us, we’re going to Get Some.
-F. Joseph Berger IV
Wingate Nov 2012.xlsx
