March 7, 2008

The North Carolina rowing team will open its spring season on Saturday with a morning of racing against Alabama at Lake Wheeler in Raleigh. As her team made final preparations, coach Sarah Haney took time out to chat with TarHeelBlue.com.

TarHeelBlue.com: What improvements have you observed heading into the season?

Sarah Haney: We've placed a lot of importance of the technical aspects of the stroke and we've made a tremendous amount of improvement, starting at the end of the fall through winter through winter training and the beginning of the spring. So I feel like they're moving the boat a lot more effectively than they were this fall and there's a significant difference from last spring to this spring. We're a lot longer through the water, and smoother through the water as well. As a coaching staff, we're just anxious to see how that's going to match up to our competition. That's one of the things we feel most exited about is that fluidity and effectiveness in the water.

THB: How does the makeup of this squad compare with those of past years?

Haney: We have experience in different ways. We have freshmen on our team, but this is their fifth year of rowing - they rowed throughout high school, so they've got experience. We've got a strong senior class that is leading the team as far as what their expectations are. That was probably the first recruiting class that we brought in to say, "Let's change the face of Carolina rowing." So they feel a significant amount of pressure to make sure when they leave this year that they've done their part. There's a little urgency from the senior class, for sure. Our junior class is a very bonded, team-oriented class. They've placed a lot of responsibility on themselves to work on the cohesiveness. And our sophomore class is very athletic. Each class has very different characteristics, but they're meshing those pretty well together. We've got to use each other for our strengths to override any of our weaknesses.

THB: How crucial is it to have an experienced coxswain in junior Shannon Wilson?

Haney: It's huge for us as a coaching staff to know that when we send Shannon out with her crew that she's done this before. I think Paige Wall and Amy Dement, the other two coxswains on the varsity team, have really followed Shannon's lead and have made significant improvements themselves in that we're looking to the whole coxswain group to lead this team. We see a lot of changes in lineups in the rowers throughout the season as people learn and progress at different rates. We also see the potential for lineup changes with the coxswains throughout the spring. So I think that's a testament to Shannon for stepping in last year and being the leader, and it's also a testament to Paige and Amy, who have followed that lead but taken what they're good at as coxswains and used that. We don't want each coxswain to be an exact replica of the others. They all have different personalities and characteristics and we tell them to utilize those to motivate their crew to their best.

THB: Have you settled on lineups for the spring and how have your reached those decisions?

Haney: In the fall, we used a lot of lineups based on rankings. The rankings were what they did in the weight room, what they did on team runs, what they did on ergs - across the board we ranked them on anything that was for speed or for power. And we just averaged their rankings and sent the lineups out that way. It did not take any seat racing into account - it was strictly those rankings.
We've used those rankings as a backup for the spring. This past week we've done a ton of seat racing to try to figure out the lineups. The lineups for this weekend are based on seat racing and what we saw this fall with the rankings. We told our team before, "If you don't bring it to practice every single day but you happen to win a seat race, as a coach I'm going to relay more on what you do every day in practice vs. that one seat race." The lineups are pretty accurate to the seat racing. We do rely on those heavily, otherwise there's no need to do them.
We are not convinced this is going to be the lineup forever - there are going to be changes throughout the season. We're going to do a ton of seat racing over spring break and we'll see what's mixing and matching. The seat races that we did do this week were very close, so we're going with what we think could be the best.

THB: After this race, you have two weeks before you race again. Do you look at this as an opportunity to see where you are then have time to continue to build in practice?

Haney: We'll put this lineup out there this weekend then Spring Break and next week we'll work on lineups. We would love to have the lineup we race on the 22nd be the same lineup we race on the 29th. Then we have another break so we can kind of revisit that again, work on lineups again, so we'd have the same lineup for April 12-13 as we would for ACC's. Then we have a big break before South Centrals, so we'll revisit lineups there again.
We don't want to change them so often we can't get into a flow of everything. We will change them if people give us reason to change them, but we won't change them just to change. We could be wrong, but since they are so close and progressing quickly, we see the potential for a lot of switches. I don't mean the face of the varsity eight, second varsity eight, the varsity four are going to change completely, but I think that people in and out in certain spots may change.

THB: Is there anything in particular you want to get out of Saturday's race against Alabama?

Haney: I think tomorrow's race is going to be a very good race, one way or the other. The reason we race is we don't know what the outcome will be, but I think it's going to be a good race, evenly matched between Alabama and UNC. So what I would like for us to see is for us to stick to our rhythm, our length and our pace that we've been working really hard on. I don't want them to throw everything out the door and just forget about boat feel, boat flow. I want them to relax and stay long and settle into what they know how to do well. Obviously we hope that's going to put our bow ball ahead of Alabama's, but we don't know, which is why we race.