Hello Justice Rowing Families: This week marks the third regatta of our season, the Walter Mess Regatta. PLEASE READ THIS EMAIL THOROUGHLY – The Offsite parking lots change weekly.
WEEK BEHIND
We had a wonderful Regional Park regatta this past weekend. As the second regatta of the season, it is more than twice the size of the Polar Bear regatta (the first one). With a total of five quads entered, we had a lot of rowers competing.
In our first race, the men’s Jr quad came in 3rd in a field of only Western Albemarle boats (Western Albemarle is one of two sculling-only schools from the Charlottesville area and is always a very fast program). As it was the first race for most of the boat, there were a lot of good things to build on. In our second race, the men’s 2nd Sr quad came in 2nd place, closely behind a fast Western Albemarle quad (notice the trend). In our third race, we raced our first novice rowers, entering the novice quad as a women’s Jr quad. However, due to a lack of competitive boats, they were placed in the 2nd open event, with three Western Albemarle Sr quads. While they finished back a fair amount, they were racing far more experienced crews. In our penultimate race, the men’s Sr quad beat the Western Albemarle quad (and four others boats) to win the top men’s sculling event of the weekend. In the last race, the women’s Sr quad came in second to the Western Albemarle quad that came in 2nd at the National Championships last season, but well ahead of the rest of the field.
[View the slideshow on our Justice Rowing gallery website.]
WEEK AHEAD
It looks like a good week of Spring weather for practice with low chances of rain or high winds and temperatures in the 50s.
This weekend’s race is the Walter Mess Regatta and the opening weekend of Spring Break. We are looking to enter even more boats than last weekend, but we also have a few rowers away. This is also the first regatta where there are heats and finals for the Championship events, if there are enough entrants in the event (for the rowers, that’s why we did the 2x1500s over winter training – to prepare you for the finals).
Coach Nate
Friday Night Pasta Dinner, 7 pm (after rowers return from practice)-9 pm: Matt Hardy and family will be hosting 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, Hardys! The dinner location is in the email dated 3/28/2023.
Regatta Food Table: We provide food for our rowers on Saturdays, and many sign-up slots remain open. Please 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 it down there for you.
Regatta Schedules: Plan on learning about when your rower will compete on or about Thursday/Friday once the race schedules are set by VASRA (this usually happens 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) 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.
—
Row Strong,
David Trissell
President
Justice High School Rowing Boosters
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