Hello Justice Rowing Families: This week marks the second regatta of our season, The Regional Park Regatta. PLEASE READ THOROUGHLY. There is a different/new offsite parking lot for this week’s race.
WEEK BEHIND
Three Varsity teams competed in the Polar Bear Regatta. The Women’s Quad (Indigo, Sabrina, Hannah, & Grace) opened their season with a commanding victory in the first race of the year. Two Varsity Men’s Quads competed in the same race, with the “B” quad (Charlie, Tucker, Josiah, and Zach) coming in second to Hylton and 0.9 seconds ahead of the “A” quad (Danny, Nathan, Andres, Ethan) which finished third. It was a cold morning with one of the stronger winds with which VASRA will still hold races. All three boats faced some strong environmental challenges and did well to overcome them.
📷 View regatta images and videos here.
WEEK AHEAD
This week is the Regional Park Regatta when we plan to race additional boats. This is also the first race where novice rowers are eligible to race. We know of 3 rowers who will miss the next regatta, which puts us at trying to enter as many as 6 quads in the races. As a reminder, it is the team policy not to race a team member who misses 2 practices in that week, as it is unfair to the people who attended the practices. With most of our boats requiring multiples of 4, there is commonly a few rowers who want to race but are not selected for that weekend’s races. We strive to ensure rowers do not miss 2 weeks in a row, but we are limited in what we can accommodate with the limitations of boat size, available rowers, and participation.
Friday Night Pasta Dinner, 7-9: Horacio and Ethan Sobel are hosts of this Friday’s Pasta Dinner. Please show up directly after practice and leave promptly by 9:00 PM to prepare for a big day of racing! Thank you, Horacio and Ethan! The dinner location is in the email from Justice Rowing dated 3/19/2023.
Regatta Food Table: We provide food for our rowers on Saturdays, and many sign-up slots remain open. Please go to the SignUp Genius webpage where you can sign up for any/all of our regattas in one place. Don’t worry about getting it down to Sandy Run; we can coordinate with early volunteers to get your contributions to Sandy Run for you.
Regatta Schedules: Plan on learning when your rower will compete on or about Thursday/Friday once the race schedules are set by VASRA (usually late Thursday/early Friday). We’ll plan to send out an email with the schedule attached. Rowers should be at Sandy Run NO LATER THAN TWO HOURS before their race. Rowers may be dropped off at Sandy Run, but there is no parking at Sandy Run for spectators. Rowers driving themselves may park at Sandy Run, but should carpool with their teammates if possible (optimizes parking and minimizes the chances of rowers being late).
Spectator Parking: ALL spectators must park off site and take a shuttle bus to Sandy Run. The shuttle bus costs $15 round trip. Once the shuttle bus drops you off it is about another 15-20 walk to the finish line. You may also pay a separate $5 each way for a shuttle from the drop off point to the Finish Line area. IMPORTANT! VASRA is using TWO DIFFERENT OFFSITE PARKING LOTS DEPENDING ON THE WEEK:
1) Commuter parking lot at Old Bridge Road and Rt. 123. This will be the offsite parking lot for The Regional Park (3/25), Ted Phoenix (4/15), Rzy Obuchowicz (4/22) and Al Urquia (4/29) regattas; and
2) All other regattas will have offsite parking at South County High School, 8501 Silverbrook Rd, Lorton, VA 22079.
MORE INFORMATION IS INCLUDED IN THE ATTACHED PARKING FAQ FROM VASRA.
VASRA Volunteers: If you are signed up for a VASRA volunteer job (you know who you are) then you may park free at Sandy Run. Tell the parking monitors when you arrive that you are a volunteer and for what job and they will direct you to appropriate parking.
NO MORE VASRA TWITTER: VASRA is switching its medium for communications about regatta days/weather/race finishes to Mastodon, a Twitter replacement. You can access the VASRA Mastodon server through a browser (https://vasra.masto.host/public/local) or by downloading a mastodon client (I know that there are clients for Android and IOS). Justice Rowing sign up to Mastadon that you can follow @JusticeRowing.
Whichever method you try, you will be prompted to create a user login (if you use the browser link above, you will be able to see the content of the server without logging in).
If you are using a client, the name of the server you want to connect to is vasra.masto.host. Depending on the client, you may have to select “local” in order to see all of the content of the server. You can get help on Mastodon here: https://mastodon.help/
There are several differences on how the clients work. Some, when you go to vasra.masto.host don’t show any “toots” (Mastodon’s version of tweets). You may have to select “Local” or “Local Server” or follow VASRA Results (or perhaps @results) in order to see any toots.
The majority of posts will be from the @results (VASRA Results) account. Starting next week, we will also be posting from @start (VASRA Start). We will post, after a race has started, which teams are in which lanes. This is good, in time, information that will help you follow your team. We do this because it is sometimes necessary for the Referees at the start to move boats around in order to get the race started.
PARKING INFORMATION IS INCLUDED IN THE PARKING TAB at VASRA.org.
Coach Nate
—
Row Strong,
David Trissell
President
Justice High School Rowing Boosters
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