Florida Tech Varsity Eight Wins Silver At Dad Vail
By Ryan Jones // May 12, 2014
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA – Florida Tech’s men’s varsity eight medaled at the Aberdeen Dad Vail Regatta for the fourth straight year on Saturday as the Panthers earned silver with a time of 5:42.15.
Michigan won the race on the Schuylkill River for the second time in three years at 5:40.22.
Virginia finished third at 5:44.59. Drexel was fourth at 5:47.61. Grand Valley State was the fifth crew to cross the line at 5:52.07. Bucknell placed sixth at 5:58.59.
Earning second place were coxswain Jessica Mellinger, stroke Jose Gomez-Feria, Ernestas Zarskis, Carson Green, Mindaugas Beliauskas,Kevin Coyle, John Martin, Andrew Konecny and bow Joe Horn.
“We have a very good varsity eight boat,” head coach Jim Granger said. “Today, we raced very hard and very well. Credit Michigan for the kind of race it rowed. Three, four, five years ago, we thought we were a guy away and we’d pick him up in the recruiting for next year to be stronger. This year, we completely changed how we prepared for this race. We came up last week and had a good race against the Naval Academy, Columbia and GW (George Washington). We worked through the weekend and came up a bit short.
“I felt like the kids raced very well. It was a very good learning experience. It’s always nice to be on the medal stand. Our standard is winning, so in that sense, it’s frustrating. We set a high standard and that’s what we’re going to be working towards starting tomorrow.”
The men’s junior varsity eight also raced in a grand final and nabbed sixth at 7:11.21. Drexel won the race at 6:38.09. Michigan (6:41.71), Temple (6:47.73), Virginia (6:56.03) and Bucknell (7:00.93) followed, in order.
Racing for the Panthers were coxswain Katherine Hausrath, stroke Clay Mathieu, Marko Milovanovic, Strahinja Markovic, Martynas Mickus, Nate Hodge, Andor Dezsi, Alec Bertossa and bow Hank Walch.
Up next for FIT is the Intercollegiate Rowing Association Regatta May 30-June 1 on Mercer Lake in New Jersey.
“Every time we go down the course, we learn something about ourselves,” Granger said. “There are things we like and things we don’t like and we try to fix them. The knowledge that we gained in this race from going through heats, semifinals and finals is going to be very similar to what we’ll be going through in the next few weeks. It’s going to help us prepare for those situations when we need to do multiple pieces within 24 hours. The level of competition is going to be ramped up. The kids are going to respond well and we’ll have positive results.”