This year’s coaching team included Waitemata Rowing Club head coach and former national coach Brian Hawthorne, 1988 Olympic single sculls bronze medallist Eric Verdonk, and two-time women’s double sculls world champion Brenda Lawson.
In initial sessions the coaching team assessed close to 100 rowers — from as far away as Invercargill — and put them in groups based on technical skill and ability.
Two of the Gisborne contingent’s younger rowers, Hannah Veitch and Phoebe Naske, were moved up to the advanced group on the first day — a feather in the cap for the girls and their volunteer coaches, Alex Hyland and Luke Jenkins.
For the next four days, the 17 coaches worked with the groups, completing two or three demanding technical and fitness sessions a day.
The groups rotated from one coaching team to another, giving the young rowers an opportunity to benefit from a range of styles and perspectives.
Hyland estimated each rower would have completed 120 kilometres by the end of the camp.
“We had more than a 100 teenagers in a small venue,” he said.
“Normally that would be a disaster, but when we called ‘lights out’, the place was dead quiet within a few minutes. They were that tired.”
Traditionally, two clubs have a challenge race for the Collaboration Cup on the last day of the camp. This year the Gisborne Rowing Club challenged the Hawke’s Bay Rowing Club.
Gisborne nominated the under-17 men’s (Sebastian Solomann and Oscar Ruston) and u16 women’s (Hannah Veitch and Phoebe Naske) double scull crews.
Both Gisborne crews won comfortably.
When the van rolled back into town late at night, it brought with it new skills, great memories and a shiny cup for the clubroom.
