The year started off with me, Captain of Boys' Boats, entering the Boston Marathon. I wished I hadn't by the time I had finished (5 hours 44 minutes later!) That was about the highlight of the Michaelmas term for rowing, as I went back to Rugby, like Sir Steve Redgrave after winning his 4th gold medal at Atlanta, "You have permission to shoot me if you see me get into a boat again.
By the end of Michaelmas term all was looking well for the senior squad, we had a meeting and the squad was about 16 men strong, all Lower 6th, and were all given a winter training programme (as you probably know 16 is a biggish squad for Monkton). All seemed too good to be true, and all of a sudden after the last Rugby training session Alex, our strongest member, broke his collar bone and spent the whole of Christmas and a few weeks of the Lent term out recovering.
Apart from that 'little' mishap the crew looked strong; training was going well; everybody was turning up to training on time and being 'keen', then one-by-one people starting peeling off and things started turning bad again. It was touch and go whether their would be an eight or not. Finally we ended up with an eight (but no spare men!)
Training was going very well especially on water. We prided ourselves on balance and speed. We became the second fastest ever Monkton crew on home water on the internal head race course and over the 500 metre sprint course.
For some reason we always stayed second best throughout the whole season; the best we ever came was 2nd in a major final. (We did win Bristol Head, but that was not something we were that proud of as we knew we had it within ourselves to do better.)
France saw another productive training camp; this year we had three eights over there - Boys' 1st VIII, Girls' 1st VIII and Boys' Colts. We introduced the early morning outing before breakfast which surprisingly the crew was in favour of (but not the coach [but he did turn up!- JMB] ) it was well worth doing as the river was like a sheet of glass. Mr. Reay, I hope you are ready for it this coming year!
For some reasons, though, when the big competitions came, we never were able to fulfil our potential. Schools Head was disappointing because of the strong head wind and being a light crew we suffered quite badly. At the National Schools Regatta we went out as though we had already won the final, therefore we did not have the aggression that other crews had and we were left for dust.
Then came Henley the event that every crew is aiming for. It's the last race of the school year and the one everyone wants to be part of. After our poor performance at National Schools we had to try and enter the event through the qualifying rounds.
This was my second time at qualifying and the best chance yet as we had beaten most of the other crews that were trying to qualify at previous races. That didn't matter though as we knew it was just Monkton against the clock and 2.2 km of water between us and the finish line.
For the eight it had to be one of the best rows of the year, everyone was pulling their hardest every stroke and they knew that the rest of the crew was doing the same; it was balanced the whole way down the course and we knew we could not have done any better.
When we got off the water all we could do was wait, we put the boat back on the rack and waited on tenterhooks for the result. As you probably have heard it did not go our way, there were 12 boats trying to qualify and only the top three got in. we came 5th behind Dulwich then we heard that Monmouth had been disqualified and so we moved up to 4th and we were only 0.3 seconds behind the crew that went into third place. Although we did not get into Henley, this was a valuable experience for such a young crew, learning aggression which we are eager to channel into what we do next year.
As for the crew of 2005, it looks to be an even better one. The whole crew of last year is still here and we have a bigger squad as Lower 6th join the senior squad to create much needed internal competition. We also have a brand new Vespoli eight for next year and Mr. Reay, the new Director of Rowing, who is bringing new blood into Monkton rowing.