Fall 2022 Welcome Back & Update
Welcome to the 2022 Fall season! We are excited to welcome many new rowers and families to the Nassau Rowing Club Community and are looking forward to a great season on the water.
Send-offs
With the start of a new rowing season come sad goodbyes, as we bid some of our long-term junior competitive rowers farewell as they embark on their exciting new academic adventures:
Breanna Gayle
Leah Bethel
Lily-Rose Jamieson (NRC female Junior Captain)
Kameron Taylor
Ellery Cartwright
David Roy
Kenneth Hart
We wish them all the best in their new endeavours and encourage them to come and row with us whenever they return home!
We would also like to extend a huge thank you to Jasmine Gayle for her service and commitment as Junior Co-ordinator, as she transitions off the Board in this role.
Coach Update
We are very much anticipating the arrival of our permanent coach, Nick Rowett, from the UK on 14.October. Nick is a professional rowing coach and club manager with 30 years’ coaching experience from beginners to high performance and juniors to masters. Nick has coached for several clubs in the UK and abroad, including Hampton School and Kingston Rowing Club in the UK and Grey High School, South Africa. Nick has coached crews to gold medals at national, university, masters and school championships in Great Britain, New Zealand, South Africa and Belgium. We look forward to welcoming him at our BBQ on Saturday 15th of October (see upcoming events).
We have been lucky to host several temporary world-class rowing coaches since the beginning of the year:
Al Morrow, who represented Canada at the Olympics in Montreal, the Pan American Games and three World Championships in 1970, 1974, and 1975. He has also coached the UBC men’s team, the national team at the World Championships, and the University of Victoria rowing team, as well as six Olympic teams, and 17 World Championships. In all, Morrow’s athletes have won a combined 25 World Championship and Olympic medals since 1991.
Dr. Daniel Bechard, Head Coach - Men's Rowing at Western University since July 2017. Western varsity rower 1999-2005. Daniel’s coaching highlights include a 2008 Temple Challenge Cup title, W8+ medaling at the 2009 U23 World Championships, and 2006 Western’s first Men’s Team National Championship Title. He also spent time as an assistant coach with the Canadian under-23 women's national team on three occasions, a coach with Rowing Canada’s talent development program, and as the team lead and women's head coach for the 2015 World University Games. Bechard is the only Canadian university coach to be named both the men's (2008) and women's (2010) Coach of the Year by the Canadian University Rowing Association.
Andrea Proske OLY; Attended her first international regatta in Amsterdam (Holland Beker) and London (Henley Royal Regatta), winning the senior women’s single sculls at the Henley. She first represented Canada on the senior international circuit in the double sculls with Gabrielle Smith in 2018. In their World Cup debut as a duo, they won silver in Lucerne. Later that summer, they finished sixth at the World Rowing Championships. They won another World Cup medal in 2019, this time a bronze in Rotterdam. They capped the season with a fourth-place finish in the double sculls at the world championships, qualifying the boat for Canada for Tokyo 2020. In her Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020, Andrea was a member of the women’s eight that won gold. It was Canada’s first Olympic gold in any women’s rowing event since Atlanta 1996 and the first gold in the women’s eight since Barcelona 1992.
Competition updates
In July 2022, our 11-strong junior Bahamian rowing team participated in the CanAmMex regatta in London, Ontario. This was a mix of NRC and Windsor rowers and included Kameron, Kenneth, Crachante, Mattias, Brea, Isaiah, Jessica, Poppy, Harrison, Will, and Tasneem. This is the first time that the Bahamas has participated in this competition, with rowers from Canada, the USA and Mexico. The competition was fierce, but the rowers gave a great performance and benefited from a 2-week intensive camp in the Bahamas, followed by a 1-week residential camp at Western University in London, Ontario, and the opportunity to race at such a high competitive level.
This was covered in articles in World Rowing and the Nassau Guardian.
Thank you, as well, to our sponsors who made this trip possible!
Later this month, four Junior rowers - Jessica and Poppy Proffitt (NRC) and Matthias Simms and Isaiah Ellis (Windsor) will row in the youth women’s and youth men’s double sculls in the Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston. Dr Kathryn de Souza will be competing in the Grand Master Veterans Singles and Dehron Smith in the Men’s Championship Singles at this prestigious event. We wish them the best of luck!
Upcoming events
Please mark your calendars for the following events:
Welcome BBQ for Nick Rowett, incoming Head Coach & Program Director
Date: Saturday, 15th of October 2022, 11 am
Location: Nassau Rowing Club, ‘Meyrose’ #13 Oak Hill Road
Rowers, partners and families, please join us for a BBQ and beverages after training to welcome our incoming coach, Nick Rowett. Vegetarian and gluten/lactose-free options will be available.
Further details/line-ups will be communicated in the Whatsapp groups.
Halloween Row!
Date: Saturday, 29th of October 2022, morning practice
Location: Nassau Rowing Club, ‘Meyrose’ #13 Oak Hill Road
Rowers get in the Halloween spirit by dressing up for a friendly row. Ghoulish treats and awards for the best-dressed single/double/quad boat will be available on the day.
Further details/line-ups will be communicated in the Whatsapp groups.
Opportunities & Access Rowing Squad - Talent Identification Session with Ministry of Education
Date: Saturday, 29th of October 2022, 2:00 - 4:00 PM
Location: C.R. Walker Senior High School Auditorium - https://goo.gl/maps/mJ9qVb648D7daiZU7
All hands on deck for a talent identification afternoon involving students from Government High Schools across New Providence. Talent identification will involve instructing students in basic erg technique, after which they will row as hard as they can for a 100m and 500m piece, and achieve maximum wattage output. We will need volunteers to teach basic erg techniques and to catalogue all the information from each of the 3 tests for each student. We will be using this information to rank participants and bring them into our Skills Development program.
This initiative is extremely important as government school outreach is a major part of our grant funding, supports the salaries of our coaching staff and covers many of our operational costs.
Each member of the club must contribute 10 volunteer hours over the course of the year - this is a great opportunity to get two of them and meet your future teammates!
Head of the Lake - in partnership with Windsor
Date: Saturday, 19 November 2022
Location: Nassau Rowing Club, ‘Meyrose’ #13 Oak Hill Road
Further details/line-ups will be communicated in the Whatsapp groups
Sparks Winter Coxswains Challenge
Date: 27 - 30 December 2022
Location: Nassau Rowing Club, ‘Meyrose’ #13 Oak Hill Road
Sparks Rowing, the leader in international rowing camps, is back in Nassau this winter with coxswains from across the US and UK. Sparks have assisted us with the purchase of our Pocock K4, the “Hutha Sayre,” and as part of our agreement, we must ensure that our coxed boats have enough rowers for their coxswains to execute their drills every session of every day of camp.
Participating rowers will receive a free Sparks Rowing visor, and will get the opportunity to meet and work with staff and coaches from Boston University, Brown University, University of Cambridge, and Harvard University.
This is another opportunity to get your volunteer hours and meet some new friends in the process!
Board updates
Thank you to all NRC members who attended our Annual General Meeting (AGM) on the 4th of October, 2022. As discussed in the AGM, there are a number of opportunities to step up and serve on our Board:
Junior Co-ordinator
Support on our Treasurer team
Fundraising Co-ordinator
Please email us at nassaurowingclub@gmail.com if you are interested in any of these positions and/or would like to find out more.
New Merch !!
We are excited to reveal a new range of Club merchandise for NRC rowers and supporters. The range has been created by JL Racing, who have been creating unique, high-quality technical garments for competitive team sports including rowing since 1982. The range of items includes branded men’s and women’s unisuits and unitanks, shorts, long and short sleeve tops, tank tops, long tight bottoms, polos and caps. Please see the order form to view the selection of items: https://forms.gle/SWMSvwQw97wwB7BA7