UCF Golden Knights - Official Athletics Site

May 15, 2008

ORLANDO, Fla. (www.ucfathletics.com) - Led by first-year assistant coach Kris Muhl, the No. 3 UCF lightweight rowers have a couple of weeks to prepare for the Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championships June 6-7. The regatta serves as the national championship for lightweight boats, and with enormous success this spring the Knights are looking to make a splash in New Jersey.

The UCF lightweight squad started the 2008 spring with a victory in the varsity 8+ race at the Metro Cup, then went on to grab another win in the varsity 8+ at the Rollins Spring Break Race as well as the Petrakis Cup. The Knights secured two more wins in May, the first against No. 3 Radcliffe (Harvard) and No. 10 MIT, and the second vs. four ranked teams at the Dad Vail Regatta.

The Black and Gold did get to experience what the top program in the country has to offer when No. 1 Princeton came to Orlando April 12. Even though the Knights were 12 seconds behind the Tigers, UCF is hoping the past few weeks have helped the team prepare even further for the toughest regatta of the year in June.

Three members of the lightweight squad provided their thoughts on this year's season with www.ucfathletics.com. Read below to go inside the UCF Knights with senior Taylor Wiatt (Jacksonville, Fla.), sophomore Gillian Powell (Mays Landing, N.J.) and junior Lauren Schueler (Pittsburgh, Pa.).

How tough is it to be a student-athlete with the UCF rowing team?
Taylor Wiatt: It is extremely demanding to be a rower. Personally, I have to get a lot of sleep. I go to sleep a lot earlier than other college students. So you have to really revolve everything around your practice schedule. You still want to be able to have fun with your friends but rowing is a priority, and sleep is the No. 1 thing. If you can't get it at night you have to take naps during the day.

Gillian Powell: Rowing at UCF is a lot different from where I came from before. I went to a school in Philadelphia, and here it is very time consuming and takes a lot of time management. But it's definitely worth it because all of the time that we put in makes us faster.

Lauren Schueler: I rowed three years in high school and I thought it was time consuming then. Coming to UCF with the busy schedule, trying to maintain everything and staying one leg up on everybody else is definitely hard, especially with classes in session. And like Taylor said, naps are a big part of my life. I never napped in high school but now I do a lot.

Are you surprised with your success this year, or are you meeting your expectations?
TW: I think that this group of girls has risen to the potential that we have. I do think that we can do more. Beating Harvard in Massachusetts came as a shock in one aspect, but we are really excited with where we are right now, and we want to push it more and keep it going.

GP: I feel like we are meeting coach's expectations, but exceeding our own. I think that we didn't know we were capable of our results, but coach Kris definitely knew that we were.

LS: This year has been extremely eye-opening for me. This is my third season and I never would have expected being able to come so far in one year. We were 10th at IRAs last year and now to be ranked third is so incredible. I came to UCF because I thought the team had a lot of potential and I definitely wanted to be a part of that.

How did it feel going to Massachusetts and defeating Harvard and MIT, as well as going to Philadelphia and winning the Dad Vail Regatta?
TW: Being in Cambridge was exciting. That is where a lot of the heart of rowing is. Being in all of that tradition was humbling to an extent because I had never rowed on the Charles before. Having wins against MIT and Harvard was probably the highlight of my rowing career so far. Being in Philadelphia at Dad Vails was also very fun because we got to see lots of different crews. And being on the awards dock was so cool, to be right up in the grandstand and everyone cheering for you was so exciting.

GP: Going back to the Schuykill River (in Philadelphia) was like going back home. That's where I rowed all through high school and I had tons of races on the Schuykill. So being able to go there and win the largest collegiate regatta was pretty awesome, especially with my family and friends there.

LS: I have to say that being in Boston and beating MIT and Radcliffe was the highlight of my rowing career. And I think we surprised ourselves because we were down the whole race and just to come back and win was pretty amazing. The race was really a last-minute thing so we were excited about going up there.

What is it like rowing for coach Kris Muhl?
TW: Coach Kris is very demanding and expects a lot out of us, but he pushes us to a level that we didn't know that we could go. Some of the workouts we think are so exhausting, but really they are making us better and faster. We are better rowers because of him.

GP: He expects the world out of us. Most of the time we are able to give him more than what he asks for. On the rare occasion that we don't, he lets us know. He worked with heavyweight men before and this is a whole different world for him. It's just him getting used to us and us getting used to someone who has these high demands. But we are getting there.

LS: Very demanding. His workouts are mentally and physically taxing. But I think that, especially the mental aspect, they make us stronger and have really brought the team together. We have bonded so much more because of his style of coaching.

How will you be able to maintain a competitive level all of the way until June?
TW: Seeing how our entire season is basically the entire school year, these three weeks are just three weeks. It's the last push, the last hard strokes, the last bit of training. So three weeks seems like a long time, but really we are used to it. We have a lot of endurance and a lot of energy. We will keep the other crews in mind as we are training. We will be by ourselves on the lake a lot of times, and we rely on our coxswain Hillary Trupp to put the other crews right next to us when they are not physically there.

GP: These first two weeks will be breaking us down and making us faster. Once we get past the two weeks, it's going to be really intense. As soon as these two weeks are over, it's going to fly by and we're going to wish it was May again.

LS: I will just be trying to show up every day with a 110 percent and try to focus on things that we need to change to make us faster, such as our technique.