"The whole city was kind of under wraps because there's a top secret laboratory where they work a lot with nuclear energy," heavyweight rower Danny Reitsch '16 said. "It's a real small city like 30,000 people or so."
The team enjoyed rowing outside once again.
"It was great to get back on the water and reconnect to the part of the sport we love, which is being on the water as opposed to just being indoors and training all winter," Lexie Lynn '16 said. "Sometimes when you're spending so much time in the gym, you lose sight of why you're doing it."
Almost every member of the men's heavyweight, men's lightweight, and women's crew teams made the trip to prepare for the first spring regatta, a mere two weeks away.
The first days of training were spent shaking off winter rust and working on technique. The teams acclimated quickly and the atmosphere intensified, as the trip kicks off the selection process for spring boats.
The coaches placed rowers into preliminary boats based their performance using ergometers, but rowers switched seats throughout the week.
"The bigger, stronger guys all started out in the upper boats, but there's this saying in crew that ergs don't float," heavyweight rower Jamie Billings '16 said. "Even though you're really fit you might not have good technique or good rhythm on the water, so erg testing doesn't always translate into speed on the water."
Finding the optimal mix of people for eight-seat boats is difficult and time-consuming. It is also stressful, as teammates compete to see who will race in the top boats.
"You line up two boats that have relatively even lineups, and then you have them do a four-minute race," Billings said. "You take the time, and then you switch two guys, who are in the same seat on each boat. Then you do the same exact race again in the same conditions and see how the margin between the times changes, which is an indicator of who is faster on the water."
With other teams practicing in the area, the women's team engaged in friendly races with the University of Tennessee.
"Our coach described it as a play date," Lynn said. "It was good in that it refocused us. During the selection process it's easy to feel like you're competing with your teammates, but racing against another team reminded us that it's really us versus them."
The teams stayed in a hotel 10 minutes from Melton Lake. A typical day included both early morning and afternoon rowing sessions.
"Three or four times between the practices we'd have video reviews," Billings said. "One of the coaches would take video of our morning practice and then the boats would get together and go over that for like 45 minutes."
Conditions for the first half of the week were amenable, but a thunderstorm toward the end of the trip was followed by a cold front.
A shuttle took the rowers to the lake, but some rowers opted for a four-mile run back to the hotel after practice.
"It was a good distance for a run for the guys who were really trying to cut weight," men's lightweight rower Will Lynch '16 said.
The rural location and sparse population offered few distractions from rowing. The isolation, beyond promoting singular focus, also encouraged team bonding. In a sport like crew, where the rhythm of the eight people in a boat translates into speed, this variable proved essential. Teams ate together, watched movies together and made frequent Walmart runs together.
"There was a lot of team bonding stuff, just hanging out with the guys," Reitsch said. "One of the team dads had a barbecue for us one night, and we also had a secret Easter bunny present event, kind of like a secret Santa event."
The men look to continue fall success in the spring, and the women hope to see their hard work translate into stronger results.
"One thing that is really cool now is that the juniors who were off in the fall are all back, so our team is a lot older and more mature," Lynn said. "Now we're a lot bigger and a lot stronger, so it's going to be cool to see how we compare to other schools which don't have the D-Plan."
