Becca Roux There's no better feeling than sitting on the line right as they're about to say "Go" and you go from stand-still to flying.
Katey Porter Go, hit-sit, hit-sit, hit-sit, hit-sit!
Today I was like, "Go! Go! Go! Go!"
Courtney MacIntosh We choose to spend 20 to 30 hours a week doing this. So we obviously love it.
Becca Roux I mean if you are not enjoying it, why the heck would you wake up at 5:30 in the morning?
Courtney MacIntosh Uh, I get up about 5:15.
Karen Man This is where we start our day at 5:45 in the morning.
Courtney MacIntosh We do a warm-up run for about 10-15 minutes.
We go in the boathouse and while we are stretching and continue to warm up, our coach will go over the workout for the day,
the lineups we are going to row in and we are usually on the water by 6:10 and we are out there till just around 8:00.
Coach Carrie Graves All right, guys, listen up. Pass this schedule around. I want to talk a little bit about this.
These are the lineups that you are probably racing in this weekend unless something happens. And I always have to add that
again this may change, people may be improving over the year and that might make a difference as well.
Any questions about the next 2 or 3 days?
Rowers What does "L" stand for on this? Lightweight.
Oh, so we don't have one of those!
[Laughter]
Coach Carrie Graves OK, let's load 'em. Be careful, one boat at a time.
Katey Porter Ready split, few more steps, few more steps. Up and over heads, ready up, ready roll. Check your feet.
OK, here we go, down to the water, ready roll, watch the blades, watch the bow, ladies.
Big shove, ladies, big shove. OK, in two, one two, yeah.
Courtney MacIntosh Oh, who are these little people always yelling at me?
Katey Porter I tell them I am a coxswain. First of all they are like coxswain? What's that?
And I tell them I'm the little person in the boat that yells. They say, "Oh, you say row!"
There's a lot of rhythm talk with "hit-sit, hit-sit" like that but there's no "row, row."
I'm in the middle of a race and I've got 20 things I'm thinking about, they want to know where they are in the race,
how much time it's been, what their rate is, what the other team is doing, how fast do we need to go, how much farther are we going,
what does my stroke look like, are our catches together?
A multitude of things that I'm talking about continuously I don't stop talking.
Danielle Bartz When you are too tired to think, she does. So, when you are making a mistake, she can literally call out your seat
either by saying Abby or by calling out your number seat and "you're late" or "you're early."
So instead of you pulling and thinking, you just hear and you're like, "I've got to."
They really control the whole boat. A lot of people don't realize how much they do.
Katey Porter OK, get a grip, don't let the wind slip out of your hand. Ready up and overhead. Ready up.
This is my cox-box and right there is the stroke rating 16 1/2, pretty low stroke rating.
Right here is my clock and this tells me how many strokes they've taken.
Plug it in, there are speakers that are all the way throughout the boat and this is how I talk, basically.
Courtney MacIntosh There's a magnet here and then there's one right under the seat.
Katey Porter So right now I'm getting a 33 stroke rate. That's what we race at.
Danielle Bartz I wasn't tired today.
Coach Carrie Graves Way too much energy.
Courtney MacIntosh Carie Graves, she really started the program here in Texas and brought it up.
Katey Porter What's fun is when you go to races, and you'll have all these girls from all the other teams coming up and asking for autographs.
It's one of those things you also sometimes take for granted, the fact that you are rowing with a gold Olympian coach.
Coach Carrie Graves I rowed on two Olympic teams and we still get together all the time and row and socialize.
They come down here and visit. We won, we went home. That was it.
Rowers Take it down to your waist.
Hug it like you love it.
Talour Venable Rowing? Rowing is a full body thing. It's not canoeing, it's not kayaking and it's not just arms.
Jessica Houghtby That's why we all have these huge legs.
Talour Venable Everyone always says, oh your upper-back must be really strong but in actuality it's your legs.
Jessica Houghtby It's your legs. If you get it into this ball up at the front of your stroke and then just jump as hard as you can.
Coach Carrie Graves An ERG is a rowing machine. Presumably people with better ERG scores make the varsity boat.
That's not always the case but it's often the case.
Karen Man You could be the best person on the ERG and not the fastest person on the water.
Rowing on the water requires a lot of technique and a lot of applying power in all the perfect places.
Courtney MacIntosh You can get pretty bad blisters on your hand. Mine aren't too bad right now. These are all perfect because they are calloused.
Coach Carrie Graves The hands become the most painful in the fall when they start rowing after not rowing in the summer.
By the time they are racing, they already have callouses.
Katey Porter There is something that is called "catching a crab," which is the ultimate fear of the rower.
Jessica Houghtby It's basically when your oar gets stuck underwater.
Talour Venable And it throws the blade forward causing the handle to come back incredibly fast.
Katey Porter Sometimes they are laying flat down in the boat. Sometimes they got knocked in the mouth. Teeth are flying.
Rowers Lean away, lean away, lean away! C'mon! Let's go Texas!
Announcer They're having trouble getting their oar out of the water. Longhorns crew now up and running again.
The Longhorns have recovered nicely back into their rhythm.
Coach Carrie Graves Is there a specific diet for a rower besides quantity?
Katey Porter Counting calories, I mean it's a lot of calories they have got to take in because they are burning so much out there.
Courtney MacIntosh Yeah, we like to eat.
Katey Porter We're all big girls.
Coach Carrie Graves Bring the boats together. Switch the 3 seat. Change that, switch 2 seat not 3 seat, 2 seat.
Courtney MacIntosh Sometimes we don't appreciate how beautiful it is out here.
It's hard to remember sometimes when you are out there and sweating and in a lot of pain.
Katey Porter Everybody is just rowing full power. And you can see the sun come up, it's pretty amazing.
Becca Roux I think Town Lake is one of the top 10 places in the country in terms of protected water.
It's usually pretty flat, which makes good, fast racing.
Announcer We are 15 minutes 'til race time. Scratch that, 12 minutes 'til race time.
Karen Man The Longhorn Invitational is a regatta traditionally the race after our spring break.
It's a good measure of how we are doing in the season and just to get us out in the water and race.
Katey Porter It's fun to see a bunch of crews, great crews come down to our boathouse and on our water.
So, this year we have Duke, Miami, Wisconsin, Iowa and Kansas State coming down.
Announcer As both crews approach the boat house, increasing rain appears.
Katey Porter Stay light, stay powerful, light and powerful, light and powerful, light and powerful. Ok, that's where the sprint is.
We can sacrifice a little bit of speed if we can get all eight places together.
Courtney MacIntosh Nothing matters except that we're together the whole race.
Coach Carrie Graves When you are tired, trust your rhythm. Trust the rhythm. Trust it, go with it, go up, go down, go with it. Go get 'em!
Rowers [Cheer]
Announcer And the Longhorns cross the 1500-meter mark with a time of 5 minutes 12 seconds.
Crowd [Cheers]
Katey Porter Boats walk all the time on the last sprint, oars are going crazy, people are going crazy. It's just fast. It's just fast.
Announcer And with 200 meters to go, no open water between the two boats it comes down to who wants it more.
Right here, the Longhorns picking up a notch.
That was a very close race, I don't know who won it.
And we have the results from the last race. Duke finishes first with a time of 6:42 even. Texas shortly behind at 6:42.2.
Courtney MacIntosh After seeing how they did it, we rode a lot steadier and had a lot more to give in our finishes.
So you learn from everyone you race with. You say what did they do well. We can incorporate that and keep what we are doing well.
Next year I'll be going on to law school and training with the Canadian national team.
Yes, I'm a Canadian citizen but I'll always be a proud Longhorn.
Becca Roux I'm hoping to stick around in Austin. There's a lot of good things in this town that I love.
So, I'm just going to find a job for a couple of years. And see where it takes me after that.
Coach Carrie Graves Rowing is not easy. It looks easy, I think, but it's not easy.
Katey Porter It doesn't get harder than rowing, it's the hardest sport there is.
Courtney MacIntosh It's true, we don't mess around.
Coach Carrie Graves It's an opportunity, not just to be a division one athlete at the University of Texas
but it's an opportunity to really test themselves and see what they can do physically.
They love it.