A bout of wind can’t stop race day.
The North Carolina rowing team had three gold medal finishes on Sunday at the Occoquan Sprints in Virginia despite nearly 20 mile-per-hour headwinds and two-hour delays.
The Tar Heels had participants in several events, including in their first place finishes in the women’s novice 8+, the women’s varsity 4+ and the women’s varsity 8+. The program also received a silver medal for the women’s second varsity 8+ team’s second place finish.
As for the men, UNC’s novice 4+ team placed in first, ahead of Loyola University, as the varsity 8+ team came in second, behind Delaware.
Overall, Coach Sarah Haney was pleased with her athletes’ performances and how they handled conditions that were less than ideal.
“I thought our teams performed exceptionally well today,” Haney said. “Some of the race times were uncertain and there were just a lot of questions about conditions. The fact that they didn’t let any of those things deter what they came to achieve today, I thought that they did exceptionally well with that.”
The women’s varsity 8+ team beat out Grand Valley State University by just 2.61 seconds, but it doesn’t matter to senior Victoria McGee, because a win is a win.
McGee, who is one of the team’s captains, participated as a member of the varsity 8+ group that she is very proud of.
“I thought we killed it,” she said. “We had a couple bad practices this week and yesterday morning our row group just really came back together as a boat. It’s just really exciting to see visibles from the work that we put in and it’s just great, it’s such a great feeling.”
