Rowing Winter 2021 Newsletter

Rowing | 12/14/2021 4:54:00 PM

The Varsity 4+ finished second at the prestigious Head of the Charles Regatta.

After a very abbreviated and hectic 2020-21 school year, the coaches and athletes were thrilled to have a mostly normal fall semester! We added eight new freshmen to the roster, along with one talent-transfer athlete from the basketball team, and we had all of our international athletes back on campus. With the band back together, we started the fall racing schedule with our annual home race against the University of Miami at Head of the Indian Creek. A win in the V4 event and a valiant effort from our V8 kick-started our fall, and set us up for a couple big races to follow. We took just one crew up to Boston for the Head of the Charles, where they earned a hard fought 2nd place in the Collegiate 4+ event, our best finish in a while. We then took that lineup and another dozen rowers to the Head of the South in Augusta, GA, a race we have never attended before. We raced in the Novice 4+, Championship 4+ and Championship 8+ events, earning medals in all three, including another win in that Champ 4+ race. Solid efforts and solid results from top to bottom, against some of our biggest Florida competition, we couldn’t have asked for a better way to close out our fall season.

While spring 2020 was a disaster, and spring 2021 involved a lot of masks and cotton swabs up the nose, we are cautiously optimistic that spring 2022 can be a banner season for BarryU Rowing. Our racing schedule will take us to five different venues, starting with Rollins College on Saturday March 5th, where we will line up against RC, Adrian, and Embry Riddle. On Sunday the 13th, UConn will be here in Miami for spring break, and we plan to race them on Indian Creek, the first time in a long time that we will do an official 2k on home waters. Our busy March continues with a regatta in Fellsmere against FIT and ERAU on the 19th, followed by a big weekend in the DMV where we will race at the Washington College Invitational in Maryland on Saturday the 26th and the Occoquan Sprints in Virginia on Sunday the 27th. Are we biting off more than we can chew that weekend? Will we get to visit the Nation’s Capital? Stay tuned. Our April will be a bit calmer, but no less important, as we kick off the month with the FIRA Championship in Sarasota on Friday and Saturday the 1st and 2nd. That will be our fifth consecutive weekend of racing, so we will then have a chance to breathe for a couple of weeks before the SSC Championship in Sarasota on Friday the 22nd. If we qualify for the NCAA Championships, we will race in Sarasota again in May, Friday the 27th and Saturday the 28th. If you are in or near any of those venues on any of those dates, let us know! We love to see alumni and parents and friends of the program, whether it is a multi-day regatta, or the half hour that our conference championship takes.

Steph Ricker, Rowing Alumnae, Head Coach at Bryant University

Barry rowing alumnae Steph Ricker is the head coach at NCAA Division I Bryant University, helping transition the Bulldogs from club to varsity status.

Ricker's rowing career began in high school and continued as a four-year varsity member at Grand Valley State University and another year at Barry University in Miami Shores, Fla. She has more than 20 years of competitive rowing experience including as an open and master's rower, having earned medals at local, regional and national level competitions. She has her USRowing Level III coaching, USRowing adaptive rowing, and Sports Nutrition Certifications. She received her bachelor's degree in psychology from Grand Valley State and her master's degree in sports and exercise psychology from Barry University.

She has coached at Hamilton and Holy Cross before coming to the Bulldogs.

Thinking back, of course I cherish race memories (awesome boat responses to a specific call, qualifying for finals at FIRAs and Dad Vails, etc), and the small hardships in training like team stair runs... but my favorite memory is seeing dolphins following us as we practiced starts at the end of practice one morning. Obviously, we didn't have anything like that when I rowed in undergrad in Michigan, so it was an amazing moment that stays with me... being able to experience that in awe with my teammates.
I've been coaching part-time about 2003, novice coaching, intramurals, and in the summer at my home club. It's always been a way for me to give back to the community and provide access to some amazing opportunities and life lessons that the sport has given to me as well.
Following grad school, I had my first opportunity to coach at fulltime at the collegiate level and found it to be an amazing way to be able to not just continue to provide access to those opportunities, but to also implement my background and experience with psychology, sports psychology, etc while being able to help teams push their limits and provide support for some amazing individuals. Sunrise and sunset rows will never get old, but some of the things that drew me to the career are the goosebumps I get when I see a rower pull a PR after training hard for it, hearing a boat hits rhythm and seeing them find the flow state for the first time... and recognizing that there is always room for improvement and new ways to find success in my career and in the sport.
I am overwhelmingly excited by the opportunities I have here at Bryant, to be able to examine all aspects of the program and make sure that we are moving forward in a way that best serves the student-athletes. With these opportunities are also the very real facts that I walked into a situation where the 3 existing student-athletes hadn't trained or been on the water in 18 months due to covid and other factors. While we are starting to find new athletes, one of the biggest hurdles that I'm facing is teaching the team what it means to be highly competitive student-athletes competing at the DI level in less than a year. We have some incredible students here that are stepping up to the challenge, but we also must make sure that we are laying a solid foundation to build the program on for longevity and sustainability.
It isn't often that we get the opportunity to have a blank slate for a rowing program in an area that is so rich in the history of the sport. I'm honored to be able to lean on my mentors, my own coaches, peers, and my former athletes as well as my own previous experiences to be able to create a program primed to support the success of the student-athletes individually, the current team creating a legacy now, and the future team with endless opportunities to define and create success together.

Barry University Athletics

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Rowing Winter 2021 Newsletter