CSSRA 2014

4 June 2014Jim Ganley

The CSSRA 2014 trip started abruptly at 3:30 am yesterday when the 50 student-athletes and six coaches wandered over to Crooks Hall to hop on the two buses to head down to the Victoria airport. Getting 56 people through check-in and security was a breeze, thanks to Westjet and their staff. There were happy security people at 5:30 am and we were all through. The first two hours of the plane ride saw many of the students sleeping while others watched our Canadians compete at the French Open. Then Mr. Carr had the pleasure of waking everyone up to start our mandatory two hour prep session. The flight attendants were thoroughly impressed with how hard the students worked. Once we arrived in Toronto, we hopped on a large “real” bus and headed for St. Catharines along the 407, which is the toll road that crosses northern Toronto. Luckily for us there were few people on the road and we made the 90 minute trip in 70 minutes. Once we made it to our home-away-from-home at the Holiday Inn on Ontario Street in St. Catharines, the students checked into their rooms, dinner was served, and then, finally, we made our way down to the race course. Once on Henley Island, we rigged and washed all the boats and oars and set up camp where we are going to be situated for the next five days. Curfew was not a problem for the team, as they were perfectly happy to hit the hay before we asked them to, especially before tomorrow morning when we hit the water of Martindale Pond for the first time. Before we do that, we are going to have a brief ceremony to christen the two new shells with finish line water from home. More news tomorrow night.

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