The Harding rowing team has doubled its size and is ready to take on the regattas.

This year the team has several new faces, most of them being freshman and a few sophomores, juniors and seniors. The rowing team consists of two divisions, varsity and novices which means junior varsity, with eleven students on the girls and boys varsity crews.

Their first regatta was on October 8, and followed the next day on October 9 at the Head of the Oklahoma with all the Oklahoma City crews. Their regattas were held at Chesapeake Boathouse on the Oklahoma River.

The races they row are determined by what their coach selects for them to race. Junior Evan Blunt, who is on the varsity team, raced in a 4 and in an 8. This means that there were 4 people in a coxswain, what the rower’s race in and the team leader. They placed fifth in the 4 and placed fourth in the 8.

“We all did very well at the regatta, I’m looking forward to the regatta in Austin,” Blunt said.

Their next regatta was on October 23 at Head of the Charles, varsity only in Boston, MA.

Only one person from the Rowing team attended; sophomore Angela Thompson-Butler.

“Boston was a great experience! It was great representing Harding, hopefully next year there will be more than one person out there to do so,” Thompson-Butler said.

The team that she was on in the regatta placed 24 out of 75 in the Head of the Charles regatta.

On October 30 the rowing team attended the Pumpkin Head Regatta in Austin, Texas for all crews. There were 513 entries from 30 clubs. Since that weekend was Halloween the crews rowed under the famous Congress Avenue Bridge which is home to 1.5 million Mexican Freetail bats. The Harding rowers were a little disappointed in the results.

“Overall it was unorganized. Usually things are smooth and we take home half the medals, but this time races were 3 hours behind and it was just all bad,” Abbie Webb said.

The following weekend of November 5 through 7 the top ten rowers from varsity boys and varsity girls team traveled to Chattanooga, TN, for the Head of the Hooch regatta where 5,000 rowers competed in the second largest regatta in North America. These students were: Otis Baldwin, Aaron Jech, Sam Lee, Joseph Nguyen, and Angela Thompson-Butler. The boys eight and quad placed in the top 50 percent of the pack.

“As a whole team, we did well in total. The regatta was very fun and the venue was beautiful,” Nguyen said.

During that same weekend on November 6, the rest of the varsity and novice rowers competed in Wichita, KS for the Frostbite Regatta.

“Overall the Harding rowers did very well in the Frostbite Regatta. Some of the Harding people were at Head of the Hooch but the ones who were in Wichita did phenomenal,” Callie Harper said.

With all the regattas taking place back to back, the rowers have to be very prepared and trained to do well. They practice every day after school except for Wednesday and practice Saturday mornings.

“In the entire fall season consisting of five months we have three regattas. It’s incredibly hard training yourself to your limit without seeing immediate results. It is like a giant mind game,” Lee said.

“We were pleased with our results and hope to do even better next year,” Thompson-Butler said.