Niskayuna Overtakes Burnt Hills in Bell

The following narrative of the Mohawk Bell was written for the Niskayuna Freshmen Boys' blog by Alex, three seat of the novice eight.

It was windy, it was cold, and the odds were…with us? Wednesday, October 31st was the Mohawk Bell and I must say the freshmen guy’s crews pretty much owned. The spirit of Trogdor must have been with us today because we won a lot, even with a pretty sizeable mishap.

In all seriousness, however, I personally did not have much confidence in our form as were heading to the start and warming up. It was probably a combination of the headwind and the fact that we were headed to a racecourse that we had never rowed before, but I was just not feeling it, and I was pretty worried about how we were going to do. Regardless, we got to the start and hoped for the best.

We saw the Burnt Hills crew at the start area, and I found that they were looking about as out of it as we were, so I got a little more pumped, and got excited for a win. The Burnt Hills freshmen crew abruptly started, and my boat saw that the Nisky freshmen boat was already almost at the Amtrak Bridge. Our boat was called, and we began the paddle.

Half pressure. Three quarters. Full pressure! And we were off. The boat started somewhat poorly, but we got it together within about ten strokes, and the race started. I think we had an unspoken goal of passing the Burnt Hills crew before Freeman’s Bridge, because now it wasn’t a question of whether or not we would pass them, it was a question of when we would pass them. Alas, we did not achieve this, but we caught up to their boat, our bow to their stern, about halfway between Freeman’s and the railroad bridge. A power ten was promptly issued, and we rowed.

And we crashed. Into a buoy. We were forced into the buoy before the railroad bridge, and we lost a very good deal of speed. We got back into it with a power ten and passed them just after the railroad bridge. Now it was just a matter of getting farther away and finishing the race, which we did.