The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/75010
This year's strong showing at the NCAA Championships marked the second national runner-up finish for the U-M rowing program, which also achieved the feat in 2001. high expectations for our athletes, but I think when that accountabil- ity comes from your teammates, it's different; it's really what separates good teams from great teams," Roth- stein added. "It shouldn't matter if you're an All-American or on the fifth boat — we needed everyone to be committed to a common goal, and needed to raise the level of commit- ment across the board. "By putting the core values into the hands of our athletes to come up with and enforce, it builds chemis- try because everyone has to put the work in or they're letting each other down. "It's really about them. This is their team, and when they take ownership of it, you have the opportunity for something special." Rothstein's decision to introduce echoed throughout the locker room. "I struggled, honestly, because I wanted to go faster. "When we began the spring sea- PHOTO COURTESY U-M MEDIA RELATIONS son, I told Felice I had no idea how we would perform in our first race. We would either dominate or we were going to come in dead last and be embarrassed." Rothstein was confident, but he may have been the only one. "Basically, we took the training plan for the national team and modi- fied it for college athletes," he said. "My assistant, Brett Sickler, who was on the national team and trained un- der this plan, was a huge resource for me, and Tom Terhaar, who is the national team coach, offered great in- sights, so I felt this would definitely work. core values was met with little re- sistance, largely because the senior leaders enthusiastically embraced the idea. His overhaul of training methods, however, was the cause for significant consternation. "I was really scared that our results would be a disaster because the plan was basically two days of hard pull- ing and the rest of the week was low intensity, and I didn't understand how that would make us faster," said Eiffert, who found her thoughts 32 THE WOLVERINE AUGUST 2012 thing new, there will be doubts. But it really wasn't an option to keep do- ing what we were doing because it wasn't working. If you're not getting results … and our rowers understood that." When Michigan opened the season "Obviously, anytime you do some- varsity eight was five seconds better than Princeton and 11 seconds faster than Brown (and they also won eas- ily in the second varsity eight race) — any lingering remnants of doubt vanished for the Maize and Blue. "As soon as our race started, we were a boat length ahead of both Princeton and Brown, and I thought to myself, 'This is happening,'" Piot- ter remarked. "We won by a boat length, and that was a confidence booster." "I won't say I wasn't shocked we beat them by as much as we did" Newberry added. "It took me by sur- prise how fast we were." surged ahead of their competitors — the second varsity eight went unde- feated on the year — and with each victory, confidence grew. Camara- derie also blossomed, especially be- tween the top two boats. In rowing, there is a pecking or- Race after race, Michigan's boats THEY CHEERED FOR EACH OTHER with convincing victories in both the first varsity eight and second varsity eight races over defending national champion Brown and defending var- sity eight champion Princeton — the Wolverines' 6:34.1 time in the first der. The first varsity eight is akin to a quarterback or point guard — it seems to occupy most of the spot- light, and leaves only morsels for the rest of the team. The second varsity eight can often feel like an outsider as resentment