Where Did The Time Go?

Wow, it's been a while since this old thing got updated! Lots of news to cover, then.

Firstly, you'll notice it isn't Sam writing this, it's Mike. This is due to Sam's decision to vacate the position of Club Captain so he can focus on studying, which I'm told is fairly useful at University. So far there are no plans to replace him, with the committee working as a team to make decisions and me in charge of the blog.

Secondly then, I should extend a huge welcome to our Freshers, whom we've whittled down from the enthusiastic masses at Fresher's Fair to a solid group of novice rowers. They've stuck with us despite awful weather delaying and cancelling outings as well as that horrible realisation that rowing's bloody hard work. The majority of these guys and girls have, of course, been initiated into the club with the alcoholic equivalent of a 12k ergo.

As for our performance as a club, thanks to the hard work of our new coach, Olivia, we entered 4 crews into Kingston Small Boats Head. Jo Crouch and Imogen Griffiths finished 138th overall, but second in the WNov.2x event, and Ryan Livingstone came 140th, overall, and 9th in the Nov.1x. Unfortunately, I had an accident and ended up in the river, completing half the race in the St. John's Ambulance boat. This, therefore, meant that Richard Swoboda and I didn't compete in the Nov.2x event later, due to concerns over my lowered temperature.

That said, we'll be entering many more races and training just as hard as before, though with a lot more complaining because of the cold. There's also more social events coming up, with the Male and Female Team Bonding nights on Wednesday 28th November and a Christmas Dinner is in the works for some time in December.

I'll do my best to post more regular updates regarding the club. I don't think we get up to enough to warrant weekly posts, but fortnightly or monthly should work out fine.

Looking Forward to 2012/2013

The new academic year (and with it the new rowing season!!) is nearly upon us and Roehampton University Rowing Club are looking forward to welcoming our new intake of freshers very, very soon! If the number of hits to this website in recent weeks and the number of people connecting with us on Facebook is anything to go, we are looking at a bumper influx of new members riding the wave of British rowing success this summer at the London Olympics.

Our club is one of the best, and most open clubs at the University of Roehampton and was recognised by Sport Roehampton as their 'Club of the Year' at their annual awards dinner earlier on this year. The club has seen massive growth in the last year both in terms of numbers and equipment, so there has never been a better time to join us. To give you an example, we have gone from a team of around 10 committed members in 2010/2011 to around 40 in 2011/2012 and have gone from owning no boats to owning upwards of 10 in the same timeframe. This season should be the tipping point in Roehampton University Rowing Club becoming a successful club on the UK University scene.

Rowing is synonymous with the "train hard, play hard' attitude and R.U.R.C is no different with us boasting the best social events and activities of any club on campus thanks to our amazing social secretaries. We're a club that wants to do well competitively too and we intend to train hard this year to improve our standings in the big races led by our new squad captains, Richard and Sarah. If you've rowed for 10 years, or have never rowed before, our club is the place for you at Roehampton.

Please take the time to look through the tabs on the right hand side for all the information you need about our club. Today i've updated our committee page with all the details of our 2012/2013 committee, so you can get to know us prior to freshers week and have also updated our 'Races and Events' page with key dates throughout the season. Key for you as freshers though is to take a look at the 'Learn to Row at R.U.R.C' page which has been updated with some key dates and information regarding your first few weeks with us.

We're massively looking forward to seeing you all at Freshers Fair on Friday 21st September. We'll have a strong presence both inside and outside the tent so feel free to ask us any questions you may have about rowing at Roehampton. If you have any questions in the meantime however, please e-mail:-

rurowing@live.com

Please also connect with us on Facebook by searching for 'Roehampton Rowing Freshers' and joining our group.

R.U.R.C Team Photo 11/12

Roehampton University Rowing Club 2011/2012

R.U.R.C End of Year Awards

Inter-Club Head Men's 4+ Winners - Sam N, Dave, Mike, Rich and Sam S

Inter-Club Head Women's 4+ Winners - Jana, Diana, Ryan, Tessa and Amy

Inter-Club Head Men's 8+ Winners - Sam N, Rich, Dave, Amy, Jeppe, Jan Erik, Sam S and Hannu (Henry missing)

Inter-Club Head Women's 8+ Winners - Amy, Tessa, Diana, Jana, Sarah, Rach, Elisabeth T, Elisabeth S and Isabel

Coach of the Year - Franki Lucas

Male Rower of the Year - Hannu Oskari Hara

Female Rower of the Year - Tessa Polder

Most Improved Male Rower of the Year - Ryan Livingstone

Most Improved Female Rower of the Year - Elisabeth Tvedt

Male Social Member of the Year - Mike Benson

Female Social Members of the Year - Elisabeth Stromneses and Isabel Bjorge

Outstanding Contribution to the Club Award - David Bedford

Outstanding Contribution to the Club Award - Amy Austen

Special Contribution to the Club Award - Sam Sears

R.U.R.C win 2011/2012 Club of the Year at Sport Roehampton Awards

On a magical night on Froebel campus, Roehampton University Rowing Club walked away with the prestigious 'Club of the Year' award from the 2011/2012 Sport Roehampton Awards. The award recognises the giant strides made by the club this year in terms of it's organisation, it's structure, it's membership levels and it's equipment, all of which will hopefully provide the basis for 2012/2013 to be R.U.R.C's breakthrough year from a performance perspective. 

A massive well done to all of our members in 2011/2012 - here's hoping for another successful season next year :)

R.U.R.C collecting their award

Club Captain Sam Sears proudly showing off our award

This year's brilliant committee (minus Sam Kirby and Eirik Christiansen)

TOUR!!!!

See below an overview of R.U.R.C's time on Tour this year from Social Sec Rachel Esker!

"On the 9th of April the biggest social event of the rowing calendar had begun, Salou Tour 2012. It had been a lot of hard work organising coaches as unfortunately the rowing team had been split up into three groups all on different ones! After a 28hour coach journey we all made it to Salou in one piece.


On arrival we joined the 9 boys who had been travelling with the university of Kent at the pub the Rio Grande which would become our regular for the week, and had our first drinks in Salou!
As we headed into the evening on the first night the theme was wedding, as you can see from the pictures some of our lovely rowing boys looked amazing in their dresses! (Ian Esplin in particular with his rather fetching wig!) With the use of the R.U.R.C beer bong getting significant use over that night and the rest of the week. The whole team ended the night in one of the main clubs Kiss, and was a fantastic but blurry start to the tour!


The Next morning was beach day! 
With the weather being nice we decided to have some games which involved a relay race and a dive into the sea 3 times. As you guess with this being a social event there was GIN involved. We then started our next game in two teams, dig your own rowing boat with all the trimmings in the sand! That’s right the space for the cox, riggars, oars and amongst other parts such as the bow ball! Thank you to all the seniors who made the events of the beach day run smoothly.

As we progressed into the evening the theme for the second night was pirates, tonight I was glad that Sam Sears was about for help with the pre drinking events he was a huge help! Again we played numerous games and endedup in a club called Snoopies which I can safely say we did not leave until about 5.30 in the morning.
The Thursday unfortunately we had some rain throughout the day, so we decided as a team to go out for dinner, the whole 28 of us went to our favourite little pub once more, the Rio Grande. Numerous pints were drunk and we all had some good food! The evening events that night were Greek and Roman style with everyone dressing up in Toga’s, and we even had Gladiators, Medusa and a Minotaur! It was the night where we allowed a senior fresher switch. This meant that for one hour the fresher’s were in charge of the whole senior team. Much to our dislike we had to eat cat biscuits that were covered in vodka and sambuca. Little did they know it was going to be turned around the next day! We headed to Pacha that night, where we saw so epic pole dancing from Mike Benson. 

The Friday we had an early start as we had a booze cruise that set sail at 10.30am! So we all dragged our self’s out of bed and headed down to the beach to catch our boat.
Being dressed in our R.U.R.C hoodies was an experience that many people had ever experienced on a booze cruise before as normally it’s the weather for bikinis and shorts. But despite the cold weather Amy day continually danced away in her bikini! It may have helped that we had a three hour free bar which was supplying us endless amounts of sangria and beer. A few of our lads were the first into the water when we stopped the boat! Which was then followed by some of our more daring girls. Some even got a trip out in a rib boat out into the sea which they all enjoyed.
Friday was our final night on tour, where our team all wore our tour tops which we were all given individual comical names, some more embarrassing than others! We had a few games for the fresher’s as pay back for the events of last night, a sausage with cheese in the middle with wiped cream comes to mind… We left about 1.30am after all the games and fun and when all the booze had run dry. R.U.R.C ended up in both kiss and snoopies with many of us not sleeping as our check out time 7am! And congratulations to Jeppe who got named our Tour hero for 2012!


I would like say a big thank you to Sam Sears for his help throughout the evenings. Along with Sarah Fort and Richard Swoboda on the last night and everyone who came to help carry with drinks! The fresher’s for being such good sports with everything that we did. Amy Austen for sitting through the meetings with me. Thank you for our lovely gifts that myself, Amy and Sam received on the last night. And as ever we missed our other Social Sec, Sam Kirby as you can see from all the pictures he was around through out the week even if it was only a cardboard version of himself! We said a goodbye to our third years who will not be joining us on next years tour who each and everyone of them will be missed!
It was a pleasure being your social sec on tour and I loved every minute of it! No doubt we will be doing it all again next year!

Rachel!
xxxxx"

Last Week of Term

Sadly, this week has been officially the last week of the 2011/2012 rowing season. That is not to say, Roehampton University Rowing Club will not continue to train and compete over the summer! Be sure to keep checking back for updates about our performance at this summer's regattas.

The main event this week was the unveiling of he names of two of our fleet of boats. The first, our club single scull, has been named LAURA after our coach during the 2010/2011 season, Laura Fisher, who really helped start the club on our current upward curve. See below for a photo!

The second boat, our club quad/four, previously named Kees Van Daam, has been re-named David Bedford. This is in recognition of Dave's (a current 3rd year) commitment to the club over his time with R.U.R.C. See below for a photo of Dave with his new boat.

The other big event at the club this week was our first ever annual Inter-Club Head Race Championships, where our crews raced against each other to be the best at Roehampton. I'm pleased to say the races were a success, and congratulations to all of the winners! Trophies and medals will be given out at our end of year meal in May.

THE BEACON

2 New Boats, a New Sponsor, a 'ROCK' Social and the Head of the River = 1 Very Eventful Week!

The clue is in the title - this has certainly been one of Roehampton University Rowing Club's busiest weeks EVER! The first big news of the week came in the form of Men's Squad member Jeppe Fensholt approaching us about the possibility of his dad's company becoming our new sponsor. We obviously thought long and hard about this (not too long though!) and graciously accepted. As such we are pleased to announce that our new sponsor for the coming season will be Murmester Fensholt & Sons A/S of Oslo, Norway. They kindly donated £600 to add to the money from our massively successful London to Brighton bike ride fundraiser, thus allowing us to purchase our new 1987 Empacher VIII from our neighbours Quintin Boat Club! That means that overall our fundraising efforts raised not only the £2000 needed to buy the boat, but we still have a good amount of money left over to hopefully purchase a CoxBox. What an achievement! We collected our new boat on Friday morning, and used it for a short session with our newly painted oars before using them both in anger for the first time at Saturday's Head of the River, but more on that later! The VIII has been coded as ROE018 in recognition of the 18 people who started and completed the bike ride, and has been named THE BEACON after the famously steep hill just before Brighton on the ride's route. We'll be sure to add some close up shots of the boat later this week, but for the meantime try and spot it in our HORR pictures below! Massive thanks again to everyone that donated to our fundraiser, our new sponsor, and also Mark Chatwin and Alex Page at Quintin for helping us out with the purchase.

A sticker carrying this logo will be added to THE BEACON very soon as part of our new sponsorship arrangement

Not content with purchasing one new boat last week, R.U.R.C also had a hand in purchasing another. Men's Captain Sam Neal, Treasurer/Fundraiser Diana Lava and Hannu Hara have chipped in together, with a contribution from Sport Roehampton, to purchase a single scull. The idea being the 3 private owners can use it at their leisure for their own training whilst it can be used by other club members at R.U.R.C sessions. We think this will be massively useful going forward. The boat is a 10(?) year old Burgashell Super Carbon purchased from Monmouth Rowing Club in Wales. It was kindly delivered to us on Saturday as Monmouth too were competing this weekend, and was rowed back to TTRC by Club Captain Sam Sears, who had an amazing time in it apparently! The boat has been given the ID ROE101, and has yet to be named. Check out below for a pic of the new boat, and also a pic of the Croker oars which came with it.

R.U.R.C's new single!

Wednesday night saw our latest social, this one being 'ROCK' themed - think KISS, Black Sabbath etc. Safe to say, as always with R.U.R.C the night was not only brilliantly attended but also massively enjoyable. Thanks again to Rachel Esker and Sam Kirby for being so dedicated to getting our rowers drunken and disorderly! Think the below photo sums up the evening nicely!

Amy, Rachel and Sarah at last week's 'ROCK' social.

And so onto the weekend, and the biggest race of the head season - HEAD OF THE RIVER. Roehampton University Rowing Club entered 2 crews into this years event, which is a massive achievement in itself when last year we were struggling to put together 1! The boys in both crews did us proud, and despite a few set-backs in the preceding week, each crew put in a performance we are all happy with. Our 1st VIII came home 381st overall, 54th out of 64 in their category, in a time of 22:03 which despite worse conditions was quicker than last year! Our 2nd VIII came 394th overall in a time of 24:04 which is comparable to last years crew, and in itself is a massive achievement. See below for a few selected pictures of the boys.

Men's 2nd VIII - Toby Ballentyne, Antonis Mavrommattis, Mike Benson, Diana Lava (Cox), Ryan Livingstone, Tom Sykes-Brown, Reece Pawsey and Ben Thompson. (Matt Dodd not pictured)

Both crews!

Men's 1st VIII - Sam Neal, Jeppe Fensholt, Jan Erik Haavik, Sam Sears, Amy Austen (Cox), Richard Swoboda, Mike Bretton, David Bedford and Hannu Hara

RURC brave the London to Brighton Cycle

On Sunday the 26th of February, R U R C took on the challenge of cycling to Brighton. We faced 58 miles, with food in our backpacks and no other means of transport than our bicycles. The event was a success! 20 participants, both amateurs in cycling and a few proficient cyclists, took part in the event in order to raise money for the Club.

The team filled a car with bags of food, changes of clothes, spare layers and tools for anything that could possibly go wrong. Rachel Esker, our fantastic Social Secretary, drove the support car, and even tried her hand at cycling.

The route was successfully completed by every participant in 7 hours! None of us quit or gave into the exhaustion and pain. And despite the two punctures and the one fall, the team got to Brighton alive and ready to enjoy their time there.

RURC did what no other team has done in Roehampton, and had their first over-night social event away from London. It was a great success and kick started at a Whetherspoons near the Travel Lodge the team stayed at. An event that I am certain the team is more than willing to repeat next year.

The route took the team through a few hills, country roads and a lot of gorgeous scenery all the way to Brighton; but it was completed with great enthusiasm and support. RURC are extremely grateful for the support that was given for the event. Thank you to Putney Cycles for the fleet of bikes, RoeActive for the continuous use of the gym. Rachel Esker for the support car, Steven Coates for videoing the event (hopefully we will be able to post this soon!), Robin Dodson for his expertise in the route and supporting the cyclists. Thank you as well for every participant for having the courage to set off at 7.30 am on a Sunday and putting your bodies through hell to raise money for the club. All the proceeds are going towards our first boat that will soon be purchased and named. RURC are extremely proud of this fundraiser and promise to make the next one amazing. Thank you for everyone who sponsored us and helped make this bike ride possible. We enjoyed it just as much as we hated it. Some members of the team are considering cycling it again this Summer for fun, so if you want to cycle with RURC get in touch with one of us. Until the next torturous, challenging and epic fundraiser event!

BRIGHTON PIER!

Head Race Double Header!

Fresh off the back of a good weeks training, and our two 5-a-side football teams facing off against each other last Wednesday (RURC FC triumphing over Row Your Boat FC 11-3), Roehampton University Rowing Club took part in 2 big events on the tideway this weekend. Our Women's 1st VIII raced in the biggest women's event of the year on Saturday, the 7k Women's Head of the River, whilst our Men's 1st VIII competed on the Sunday at the 5k Hammersmith Head. Both races went extremely well which is credit to our rowers! In glorious sunshine the girls came in 272nd out of 287 crews and by all accounts looked smooth and good all the way down the course. The Captain at TTRC commented on the Sunday how good they looked and was 100% surprised they didn't finish higher! In completely contrasting conditions on Sunday (the weather was horrific) the boys came home 91st out 105 crews, gaining 10 places on their finish position last year and beating novice crews from some really good clubs such as Thames RC and Twickenham. Both results bode really well for next year when the majority of the crews will still be with us. A great weekends effort. Check below for some photos from the races, and also check back soon for an update and photos from last weeks London to Brighton bike ride fundraiser - it was EPIC! Thanks also to everyone who attended and contributed at the R.U.R.C AGM last Tuesday. Much appreciated.

Women's 1st VIII at WeHORR 2012

Men's 1st VIII at the Hammersmith Head 2012