As spring sports gear up in Malden High School, the crew team still has a while to go until their first match. As such, the team is taking the extra time to prepare for the upcoming season. The Blue and Gold was able to catch up to one of the new captains on the crew team, Ryan Li, in order to get his take on the team.
Captain Li’s main issues were centered around trying to get the team to work together as a unit: a topic of importance to him was making sure that newer members, around a quarter of the team, were situated well with older members and were able to perform in synchrony during a match. Crew is a sport heavily dependent on synchrony, as without synchronized rowing from everybody, a boat will not be able to properly accelerate. Li also lamented over scheduling issues, saying that “there are definitely some good people who work together…[but] they’re not within the same time range for rowing.”
Li generally emphasized the need of the team to improve in every single aspect: while he believed that the team could pull off some victories as is, it needed more work to be at the standard: “even if we have the synergy, [team cooperation] might not occur…we need to work on form, we need to work on synchronization, we need to work on times, and we need to just work together better.” This was especially important for newer members, as a lot of them had absolutely no experience with crew or rowing before joining the team, and had to be brought up to speed quickly. With that in mind, this delay became a blessing in disguise.
However, Li remains optimistic about the future. Despite all the problems that the crew team is trying to work out, the captain remains optimistic about the team’s ability to perform: “this year might not look as great as last year’s, but we are definitely set for this year, and we are definitely set for next year.” The entire crew team is hopeful that the time spent training now will translate to better results when their meetups begin.
