COURTNEY MIRANDA; Online Editor: mirandcs@plu.edu
Our very own Pacific Lutheran University Women’s Rowing team won the Lamberth Cup for the first time in 13 years, ending University of Puget Sound’s winning streak.
The team will get back in the water for the Northwest Conference Championships Sunday, April 24 in Vancouver, Wash.
Coach Andy Foltz said he’s immensely proud of the team but knows that in the end, their win is just one more step towards their original goals.
“On my end it feels really good, but to me the success is simply a product of the great student-athletes we have here at PLU. I inherited a team who wanted direction, a team who already knew how to work hard but just needed to be pointed in the right direction,” said Foltz.
Foltz has had a lot of success in such a short time coaching this team, but to him it isn’t about the wins or the losses. Foltz said it’s about pushing the athletes to strive for the best in life, in and out of the water.
“[Success] is about graduating every student-athlete that comes through this program, becoming better people because of the experience they had as rowers and a student-athlete here at PLU,” said Foltz “These are truly the successes we have had in such a short amount of time. The on the water successes are nice, and our goals are to have more, but I often think of those off the water as having a greater impact on what kind of a team we are.”
According to Foltz, the team had a handful of goals coming into the season.
The top focus for the year was to place within the top five with the Varsity 8+ at the National Collegiate Athletic Association championships and the team goal, to secure a full team bid to the NCAA’s at the end of May, just to name a couple.
“We’ve so far been on pace to accomplish those goals and have the opportunity to compete at the NCAA’s. We certainly aren’t counting our chickens before they are hatched. But we feel good about where we are at and are still working to get faster. We know that our conference teams will get faster in the next couple of weeks and so we are dialed in to doing the same.”
One of the biggest goals, however, is representing the student in student-athlete. The team made a goal for a combined team grade point average (GPA) of above a 3.3. The team started spring term well above that goal and continues to work hard to stay at their 3.5 GPA.
Correction: PLU Women’s Rowing also won the Lamberth Cup in 2011
