Work awaits rowing selectors

Press, 25 September 1987, Page 21

Work awaits rowing selectors

The newly elected Canterbury rowing selectors, Duncan Holland, James Sheehan and Ray Wiese, will have a lot of work on their hands during the 1987-88 season. In the past the only significant task for the provincial selectors has been picking the Canterbury “Rower of the Year" at the end of each season.

But this season the panel will be kept busy right through the David Craw Cars pennant series at Kerrs Reach.

The new format for the pennant series was unveiled at the annual meeting of the Canterbury Rowing Association this week. There will still be three

two-day regattas but for the first time crews will enter in divisions (instead of classes), and race in the eights, the fours, the pairs and so on. They will race on the Saturay and that evening the selectors will meet and seed the crews for the Sunday. “The fastest crews will race each other on the Sunday,” said Mr Sheehan, also the association's publicity officer.

Theoretically a novice eight, if it was fast enough, could end up racing against a premier eight. Mr Sheehan said that the association wanted to get away from the situation where a crew would win a race by 500 metres.

No pennant points will be awarded until the final day of the series when each winner will receive 60 points, divided by the number of crews entered. It will be possible for clubs to start the final day with a minus score because there will be a 20-point penalty for each discipline lapse. Among infringements for which a penalty could apply will be disobeying instructions, arriving late at the start, or backchating. All long distance races will be part of a D.B. series this season. A junior coaching school was held recently at Kerrs Reach and each month the selectors will call for a per-

centage of those rowers to reassemble. Eventually a Canterbury junior men’s eight will be named to race against Australia and New Zealand in the May school holidays. The opening day for the rowing season will be October 4, beginning at 2 p.m. The first regatta will be at Akaroa on November 7. Other officers elected were:— President, Mr T. B. Le Bas; vice-presidents, Messrs C. D. Borgfeldt, J. Wylie, J. Sheehan; secretary-treasurer, Mr B. E. Neill; assistant secretary-treasurer, Mr P. J. McQuinn; publicity officer, Mr Sheehan.