Courtesy of Doug Welling

The rowing team has had an eventful fall, from the opening of the Steinwachs Family Boathouse to some successful regattas. Over the weekend of October 17, the team had four boats competing in the Head of the Charles regatta in Boston.

In the men’s collegiate fours race, the Polar Bears finished in 18th place out of 40 boats. The regatta is known to be very hard on the coxswain, who steers the boat, because of the many tight turns and bridges to navigate on  the course.

Coxswain Piper Wilson ’26 was pleasantly surprised with her experience on the river in the race.

“There’s a lot of tricky turns, and if you’re near any other crews, it can get pretty dicey,” Wilson said. “I was going into it with the expectation that we’d be passing people and that it would be pretty intense. And it wasn’t at all. It was very easy just to drive in a straight line and tell my rowers to go really hard, and that was fun on its own.”

Milo Goodell ’26 was part of the men’s four boat and described the exciting atmosphere at Head of the Charles.

“It’s a global stage for rowing, which makes it really exciting,” Goodell said. “There are Olympic rowers on the water that weekend…, so it’s really cool to be a spectator there and just be on the water at the same time growing next to some of these crews and comparing times.”

Head Coach Doug Welling was very pleased with how his team performed in the challenging race despite an equipment issue with the men’s eight boat, he wrote in an email to the Orient.

“The level of competition was high, and it is always motivating for winter training to come away from the Charles having raced with crews we hope to be competitive with in the spring,” Welling wrote. “Our men’s eight had equipment issues, which affected the steering…. Though the finish place was not where goals were set, the coxswain, Mason Kahn [’28], handled the situation incredibly well to navigate the full course safely.”

The women’s collegiate eight boat, composed entirely of experienced upperclassmen, came in 27th. The women’s four finished in 26th out of 40 boats on the water.

Divya Bhargava ’26, captain of the women’s team and part of the women’s eight boat, said that having past experience on the Charles River helped her going into the crowded regatta.

“I was in the eight this year, and we had two people in our boat who hadn’t raced [at Head of the Charles before],” Bhargava said. “I think it was good for the nerves to know what to expect going into it and know that it [would] be windy at the start. So having the knowledge that the conditions will only get better as you [go] was good.”

On October 25, the team competed in the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin (CBB) regatta in Sidney. There were four races, each with at least two Polar Bear boats in competition.

Welling emphasized that all members of the team got to compete, including some for the first time.

“This year’s CBB was our only full team regatta of the season. This made the event extra special on Family Weekend to have several of our rowers racing for their first time for Bowdoin,” Welling wrote. “The CBB fall regatta is as much about Maine rowing camaraderie as it is competition, and we all feel proud to represent this state at a national level when racing in the spring.”

Goodell added that the regatta was competitive despite its small size.

“We’re a club program, so we race a lot of club regattas, which are often not quite as competitive as racing programs like Bates and Colby since they are varsity programs, and they’re recruiting high school rowers.… We’re really lucky to have them nearby to compete with,” Goodell said.

With the docks being removed from the water tomorrow, the team will practice four to five times a week indoors throughout the winter, spending plenty of time on indoor machines and working on its mental game.

Going into her final semester with the team, Wilson looks forward to lots of good training and regattas.

“We have our spring training camp … in South Carolina, such a treat,” Wilson said. “And I’m really looking forward to our NERCs [New England Rowing Championships] regatta [since] it’s one of the few times all season that we get to see non-club teams. So we are not the most competitive boat, but we get to race really hard and be in a really deep field.”