Club Committee

2004 - 2005 Manifestos

Andrew Lea-Cox - Men's and Overall Captain

Overall Captain

The main point of having an overall captain in my view is to oversee both men's and women's parts of the club and see that both have a fair chance to perform at their top standard. To maintain a high standard of rowing and high morale, I think we need to focus some more attention on integrating novices with seniors, both by seniors participating more in novice training and by encouraging novices to come along to club social events, particularly in Michelmas term.

We are reaching a crisis point with regards to coxes; I am glad we implemented a scheme for training coxes at the beginnings of the year, although a lot of mistakes were made and we were unable to keep coxes from dropping out at an alarming rate. I think it is important that we keep someone in the position of coxing captain, so we can learn from our mistakes and successes of the past year and hopefully improve the situation next year.

The past year has been dominated by a series of disasters resulting in substantial damage to boats and other equipment. I think it is crucial that we make all members of the club aware that we are extremely lucky to have all this equipment available to us and that we expect the greatest care to be taken to avoid unnecessary and avoidable incidents.

As Secretary, this past year has given me great insight into the running of First and Third and I feel that I have had substantial experience of everyday running of the club, both from an administration and practical point of view. I have stabilised the club's financial situation, and implemented what I hope to be an effective system that will avoid the financial disasters of several years ago. I intend to keep up the pressure on college to continue maintaining the boathouse albeit at a rather slower rate than is ideal.

As a result of the damage to equipment, our funds available to spend on new equipment are becoming rapidly depleted. However in my opinion, the club really needs some viruses or novice sculling boats. Also on order is a replacement coxless four for Mary Gwyneth and hopefully with a better sponsorship deal, we could get some replacement ergos for the old Concept IIs. As we have a launch engine, it would also be useful to find a launch shell, which would be particularly useful for outings at Peterborough and on the Tideway.

Men's Captain

As someone who noviced in a four and didn't touch a scull for over a year, I have had first-hand experience of the difficulties of jumping head-first into sweep-oared rowing. I think it is extremely important that novices learn to scull, or at least learn the basics of sculling before they start sweep-oared rowing, as it not only makes them more flexible when it comes to rowing bow/stroke side, but it forces them to learn how they affect the boat.

I understand that this is perhaps not the most practical thing when it comes to training novices in the ridiculously short period in the Michelmas term, but I am adamant that this will lead to a better quality of rowing when novices reach a more senior level. It should not only reduce the need to iron out any bad habits at a later stage, but people will have a better idea of how to feel what is going on in fours and eights.

I would like to continue with the excellent approach to training that Dan has taken during this past year. It is very important that people maintain their fitness through the holidays, as the very short terms and long holidays severely disadvantage college rowing, because of the ludicrously short training period during term-time. At the same time, I think it is still important to support recreational rowing for those who don't wish to commit to a steady training plan, and I will fully support this.

Training in small boats is not something we should restrict to Michelmas term and the Small Boats Regatta. Once someone is confident in a scull or pair/double, it is very easy to get an efficient workout as would have been done on an ergo, whilst improving skills on the water at the same time. Videotaping is also an invaluable coaching aid and I intend to use it as much as possible on all the top crews. I would like to keep Iain Law involved in coaching and constructing an effective training plan that concentrates on efficiency, not quantity of training and training camps will be an important way of kick-starting the term's rowing.

I started rowing at school in 2000 and have rowed in the 1st Lent and May boats over the past year and a half. I am committed to running a successful and enjoyable men's boat club.