Head of the Lake Regatta

On Sunday, November 6th five of the Inlet Rowing Club Juniors along with their parents, coaches and a loyal photographer woke up extra early in the morning to drive across the border and down to the University of Washington to race at the Head of the Lake Regatta. We didn't come home with any metals, but it was a great learning experience for all of the rowers involved, and a great chance to see what a big regatta can be like.

Check out the video Brandon created using footage taken at this regatta featuring two of the IRC Juniors who have stepped up as rowers and leaders in the club this past year.

Deep Cove Classic Regatta

On Saturday, October 9th ten of the Inlet Rowing Club competitive members attended the Deep Cove Classic Regatta. The rain held off to allow for a great day of racing. For many of the IRC rowers, this was their very first regatta!

We came home with the following results from the head race portion:
Master's Womens 4x - 2nd place
Open Womens 2x - 5th place
Mixed Masters 2x - 2nd place (only behind 1st place by 12 seconds!)
Open Mens 2x - 4th place

And in the dash...
Masters Womens 4x - 2nd place
Open Womens 2x - 2nd or 3rd (in final, but position not specified)
Mixed Masters 2x - 1st place!!!
Open Mens 2x - not in final

Good job everyone!

Upcoming presentation

The Old Mill Boathouse would like to invite you (everyone!) to a presentation by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society on October 27th at 7:15 PM about both local and national parks.

If you love paddling, rowing, sailing or powering around our province, this will be really good for you and your friends.
Come and bring your family and friends for a 30 minute video and a short Q&A session after.
Refreshments will be available.

Bring-a-Friend Row

On Saturday, September 10th the Inlet Rowing Club invited anyone who was interested to come out for the morning to give rowing a try. The turn out was great! A good combination of experienced recreational rowers, as well as friends, neighbours, and others from the community successfully rowed together on beautifully calm water that sunny morning. After the row, everyone joined in for an hour of pancakes, fruit, coffee, juice and socializing. It was a very fun morning, and definitely successful in expanding a little more knowledge about rowing into the Port Moody community. Thank you to Adreinne for making all the pancakes, and to Shawna and Sonja for coaching all the new rowers. If you were one of those rowers, thanks for comming out to try it, and we hope to see you back again soon!

Dragon Boat Members Learn-to-Row!

In the very last week of the summer, the Inlet Rowing Club was pleased to teach a one day learn-to-row program to some of the Nothin Dragon Members who were interested in giving rowing a try. The weather was great, and the nine dragon boaters seemed to enjoy their experience rowing in an 8+. Besides the opportunity to share the love of rowing with more members of the Old Mill Boathouse community, this was also a great way to make connections between our two clubs. Thanks to the nine dragon boaters who came out that day to try rowing...we enjoyed having you!

This Spring and Summer has brought about many exciting changes and achievements for the Inlet Rowing Club – only a few of which could fit onto this page!

Coaching

The month of May brought excitement with the addition of Shawna Lum as our new Head Coach. Shawna has been doing a great job of coaching the competitive morning practises, and filling in during the afternoons when needed. It is great to have a strong coach pushing us to the limits on the water. Welcome to the team, Shawna!

Rowing Dock

After a long winter of neoprene socks and gum boots, the month of April brought with it a brand new rowing dock! Thanks goes to Rick for the behind the scenes research that went into finding and buying it for our club. Thank you also to all the people who volunteered on Good Friday to put the pieces of the dock together and send it floating out into the Inlet. Having a dock again has been a great luxury!

Learn-to-Row Programs

This summer, the learn-to-row programs have been expanding like crazy! The spring started us off with a small learn-to-row group of Juniors who have since then all become recreational rowers. The end of August saw us filling learn-to-row programs with 12 participants at a time. A total of 30 individuals tried the three-week learn-to-row program this summer…most of whom have expressed an interest in continuing to row during the year…yay! Thanks goes to Chris and Sonja for coaching the learn-to-row and recreational group on Monday and Wednesday evenings. Thank you also to Shawna and Solal for filling in whenever necessary, and coaching the recreational rowers on Saturday mornings.

Summer Camps

This summer, some of the summer camps run by the City of Coquitlam at Pinetree Community Center came rowing for their Friday out-trips. On four Fridays over the course of the summer, we hosted these summer camps for a day of learning to row. In total, 80 kids between the ages of 10-13 tried rowing this summer because of these summer camps. That is awesome! Thank you very much to Solal, Rick, Laurie, Lynn and Chris who coached for these camps. Thank you also to the many people who volunteered in the mornings and afternoons of these days to help with the set-up and clean-up for the camps. Those eights are hard to carry!

Coaching Courses

This Spring, Rowing BC offered some great weekend coaching courses which some of our coaches were able to attend. In April, Sonja and Chris attended a learn-to-row instructor course in Victoria and had the chance to not only learn more about coaching new rowers, but also had the chance to make connections with coaches and rowers for the Victoria City Rowing Club. In June, a course was offered to teach coaches how to coach rowing to adaptive rowers. Chris and Sonja attended the course on a sunny weekend in Whistler, while Solal and Leonard attended it the following week in Victoria.

Regattas

Congratulations go out to all the rowers who competed in the Head Up the Creek regatta in False Creek back in March. This new regatta featured rowers racing from Vanier Park, past Granville Island, all the way to the Telus World of Science, and back again. The interesting course included rowing under three different bridges, and passing many of the small False Creek ferries. Even though the weather wasn't beautiful, the rowers had a good time, and came home with great results!
Jaymes and Joey = 1st place U19 double, 1st place men's lightweight boat
Liam = 1st place U19 single
Sonja and Brandon = 1st place mixed lightweight boat
Thank you to Roar for transporting all our boats to the regatta that day. Thank you also goes to Chris for accompanying the team as our coach for the day.
A pat on the back also goes out to Jaymes and Liam for racing in the BC Championships regatta hosted at Elk Lake in Victoria on July 8-10, 2011. Thanks to Anna for all her work in organizing the regatta details. Thank you also goes to Shawna for spending the weekend in Victoria to coach our Juniors and make connections with the other coaches there.
Most recently, Pamela and Adrienne attended the Cascadia Masters Regatta at the end of July. They raced well in their double, making it into the final. Pamela was able to come 3rd overall in her singles race. Good job!

Equipment

This Spring, using grant money we had recieved, the Inlet Rowing Club was able to purchase two new-to-us Wintech singles to be used by the competitive team. The addition of these two boats to our boathouse was quite exciting! Thanks goes to Rick and Solal for noticing these boats for sale, and organizing our purchase of them.