Each spring, the men's rowing team travels south for a spring break training trip. For the past several years, the Orange have traveled to Clemson, S.C. to stay at Clemson Outdoor Lab with other collegiate teams from the north who spend the week training on Lake Hartwell.
While down in Clemson, S.C., senior oarsman and intern in the Syracuse athletics communications office Connor Toomey, will be journaling the team's week-long training trip to Lake Hartwell. Each day, Toomey will log his experience on the trip, which will be the last of his collegiate rowing career at Syracuse. Below is one of Toomey's entries.
7:00 AM
I woke up this morning to Joe Willis playing "One" by Metallica. It was a fitting song as we geared up for some more hard strokes at practice. Coach had us warm up on our own during the continental breakfast before meeting as a group at 7:45. The group launched in nice and warm outside with a slight wind but nothing that we couldn't handle in fours. I was in the same four as yesterday, except this time we had Adam Rajab in place of Ryan Elsinga to start the day. We had a good warmup out to the same spot that we did eight-minute pieces the day before. Once racing got underway, we did some switching between the boats. Often this is called a seat race to see which individual can make their crew row the fastest and most efficient over a set distance. My crew had some good pieces, splitting the day with two wins and two losses against the other four that consisted of Laurence Joss, Mack Carr, Ryan Elsinga, Stevie Chuck, and Sam Fernandez (Stroke to Cox).
Men's Rowing Team has a meal during Spring Break trip.
10:00 AM
After practice I went back to Hummingbird Cabin showered and chilled with Scott, Chris, Joe, Ethan, and Sam before heading to breakfast. Scott and Chris were on Dawn Patrol this morning and did their four-minute pieces in an eight, so they were telling me about their row. Breakfast today was the best so far in my opinion. We had breakfast burritos, hash browns, oatmeal, apple turnovers, corn muffins and cereal. During the meal I realized that it is Pi Day (3/14/2023) so I went to Mark and Ryan both who are majoring in math heavy majors as Ryan is a math and computer science major and Mark studies aerospace engineering. Both jokingly shook my hand and thanked me for wishing them a Happy Pi Day.
Speaking of Mark, here he is in line for one of our meals today.
Now I will continue to stay in Kresge for a bit of time and do some more work for my capstone between practices.
12:00 PM
I hung out with Tristan and Kat while they did homework or made brackets for the men's and women's NCAA march madness tournaments. While I wrapped up some of my capstone work, I started some treatment with Julie. During treatment Tristan was asking Julie and I for our opinions on what teams to select for each tournament. I love basketball, especially the NCAA Tournaments, so it was a pretty fun debate.
After that it was time for lunch. I ate with Alex DeGrado, Sam Hobson, Michael Harris, and Cal Hansen. Lunch today was chicken pot pie soup, deli meats, and salad.
3:00 PM
Before the second row of the day, I had a call with someone with the Boston Red Sox to gain more information on a potential opportunity after school ends.
Men's Rowing practice on Lake Hartwell.
At practice I was in an eight with Bricen Nygaard, Ethan Graham, Isaac Evans, Arnaud Buard, Ben Dukes, Lachlan Doust, Ben Campbell-Reide (BCR), myself, and Cole Nordby (Cox to Bow). BCR told me that he wanted to have a feature in the journals and proceeded to tell me to check out his sick dance moves. BCR hit the griddy and some other sick moves before we launched. It was super windy on Lake Hartwell, so Cole and I were having a fun time out in the bow of the boat, getting blasted with rolling waves hitting the bow of the boat.
5:30 PM
Before we went to dinner, I called my parents to check in and say hello because I hadn't checked in with them in a while. Turns out that Syracuse, Albany (my hometown) and the rest of the northeast is getting pounded with snow.
At the dining hall we ran into another team, Dartmouth College. A lot of guys on our team are friends with the Dartmouth rowers as we race them every year or have raced with each other for their country's national teams. Once we finished dinner the team ran to Food Lion to get some groceries for the second half of the week. I didn't need anything so I walked across the parking lot with Reilly Eagan, Alex DeGrado, and Ryan Elsinga to Dairy Queen to get some Blizzards. Payton Gauthier, Sam Fernandez, Nicholas Khol, and Finn Conlon also joined us after we had sat down to enjoy our desserts.
Hanging with teammates (Chris Young, Scott Zimmerman, Kat Kelly and Mike Kepler during the day.
When we got back to the Outdoor Lab, I watched some of the New York Rangers face off against the Washington Capitals for Hockey Night in America on ESPN. A few minutes after the second period ended, a large group of my teammates came into my room to play Cards Against Humanity. One of the members of the group was Sam Hobson. Sam told me that he wanted to say his quote of the day for all readers, so I wrote it down. He said that the quote of the day was "3-3-3 Cancel." It was very random, but he and Alex DeGrado thought it was very funny. I plan to join them after finishing this journal. I will check in tomorrow on our day off and write about our adventures from the day.
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