The Crimson Tide rowing team will travel to Clemson, S.C., this weekend to compete against Clemson and Marist. Alabama recently came off an eventful weekend in Oak Ridge, Tenn., earning six wins. This will be the second event of the spring season for the Tide.
Previously, Alabama won five races at the Louisville Invitational Regatta. The Tide also won one race against Duke and current national champion Virginia, two of the toughest teams in the nation. Coach Larry Davis said the experience Alabama gained against Virginia and Duke will hopefully give the team a foothold against Clemson.
“We have a really great group of girls,” Davis said. “Even though they are young, they really want to go out and compete. They aren’t intimidated, and they weren’t intimidated against the national champions. That’s how we’re going to pick up the kind of race-savvy determination and toughness that we need.”
Davis said that though it is apparent that other teams have a week or two more of practice under their belt, Alabama is still a competitive team.
“We’ve showed that we are learning based on this time, but we aren’t quite there,” Davis said. “I don’t want to push the team too fast to where we effectively skip over some development that we really need that will give us the speed that we need at the end of the season.”
Alabama has been focusing on improving its racing speeds as well as working on a cleaner execution. Even with the lack of time between races, Davis said his team is ready to compete with Clemson and Marist.
Although it is still unknown whether Marist will compete in the race, Davis said he felt confident that Alabama would do well against them. As a regular competitor at the NCAAs, Clemson poses a challenge to the Tide.
“Clemson has competed in the NCAAs over the past several years, and I would expect them to compete again this year,” Davis said. “They’re going to be similar to what we saw out of Virginia and Duke. We’re going to have to pick up some boat speed if we want to compete against them.”
Expectations are high for Alabama. Davis said that he wanted his team to really compete against Clemson and to not be psyched out against the Tigers’ capabilities in order to have a good race.
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