Bedford Modern School Boat Club

Hello All,

Today, we had an extra early day following the request from Mr Satchwill and Mr Bavington – we were not allowed to be late!

Breakfast was the usual… ‘athlete’s diet’. The senior squad arrived at the lake ready to do 4x2k race pieces. However, Mr Bavington decided to ‘spice up’ our programme by ‘gathering some data’ with a cheeky seat race. It was too spicy for Jess so she had a paddle in a single! During this session, we were greeted by Wimbledon High School arriving.

This was followed by an effective revision session – thank you to the academic staff.

We had rather a dramatic lunchtime due to the betrayal in the points system. Lizzie is now proudly and boastfully winning the competition by eating everything, even every part of the beach! **Apparently this is some sort of food eating competition**

We then went out for session two where the boys were surprised with even more ‘data collection’ whilst the girls went out in three quads to practice their racing starts for the upcoming regatta season.

This was surprisingly eventful as the senior girls decided they wanted to test the limits and stability of the new Hudson by practicing some EXTREME rigger dips at the catch resulting in Miss Bruce pulling some interesting and disapproving facial expressions!

We then had a slightly more interesting revision session, hearing about the some of the senior boys’ academic stories, along with Mr White helping some children with physics.

We are now having a senior squad movie night to recover and prepare for the really busy day at the beach tomorrow…

Love from the senior girls

Lara, Jess, Imi , Abi and Lizzie

Today’s sessions for the J15 girls were firstly technical based and then lots of hard work after lunch. We started off in smaller boats focusing on technique including blade depth, length in the stroke and hand speed around the back end. After lunch we moved into two quads where we focused on power using power water work in pairs. This improved our timing and ensured we had pressure on at all times to help us in the upcoming regatta season. The power water work was hard as we had a long way to go with artificially slow boats (we had a bungee on!) so we were all very tired at the end but we managed to get the most out of our session. Overall it was two great sessions with brilliant weather and great teamwork with well deserved ice cream afterwards.

Katie, Grace, Nika , Freaya

Sabaudia: Day 1

We awoke early, very early, extremely early. Upon arriving at the airport, we quickly located the finest dining at the airport. We all chose to have the American Breakfast, showing the start of our team synergy going into this week ahead.

Entering the aeroplane, we were met face to face with the man himself, Vernon Kay. Aaron informed him that we were “Doing rowing”. He laughed at us. We laughed at ourselves. Ethan and Aaron gave a nice rendition of “ Never gonna give you up” and the whole plane knew we “will never turn around and desert you.”

We landed in a very sunny Italy. An hour and a half later, we arrived at Le Palme Hotel. After some tasty Italian cuisine, we rigged up, went out and “did rowing.” We were promised a light “technical session”, it was not… a nice start to the week!! Showing our team synergy again we had a decent session.

We finished the night with some call of duty, Rajesh and Matteo were undefeated in their campaign. Afterwards, we all went to sleep.

Day 2:

We awoke very early, extremely early. Joe Walker reminded us how much he eats, again, annihilating a chocolate tart. We all headed down to the revision room where we worked furiously (I promise mum), and some say we haven’t left yet.

After our brisk walk down to the lake, we were informed of another “Technical session.” This one was slightly more technical as we battle paddled in 6s rather than all 8, and Bav figured out how to work a launch.

After lunch, we headed to town, for revision snacks before entering the revision room once again. We finished off the day with yet another battle paddle in the matched eights. It began sunny, but the weather quickly deteriorated, just like our hands… Hail lashed down with the roaring, thunder and lightning. After a quick run home, on the very dry road, with definitely no thunder echoing around us…

We had dinner, which was beautiful. Reminding us of a day out eating the beach.

Onwards to tomorrow.

The Senior Boys xx

The trailer has arrived and we’re on our way! Rowing is known for operating around some fairly unsociable hours, which I’m sure our parents can relate to, however arriving at school at 02:30am was particularly unpleasant.

During this week I have programmed a fairly relentless set of sessions designed to help our crews improve technically, push them as athletes and build as much cohesion amongst the whole squad as possible as we share many common goals.

Throughout the week the students will also be supported academically with all staff members supervising revision sessions and helping the students prepare for the busy exam season that is now fast approaching. The camp has become known for giving students a final push into this hectic time and allow them to approach their exams as prepared as possible. I can only thank the academic staff that give up their Easter break to attend the camp and support such a vital element of the trip.

The students will be taking it in turns to write a blog post each day, which will hopefully give you an insight of what they’re up to and how they are getting on. Mr Satchwill will also be uploading as many pictures as possible so that you can share your son/daughters experience.

The students are clearly excited, and the staff have definitely been on a count-down to camp for a numbers of weeks now, so fingers crossed for some fine Italian weather and food, which will set us up nicely for the week!

Please check back soon or follow us in Twitter which will guide you to the blog posts.

Mr Bavington

Jess Read had a very successful weekend at her second set of GB trials and produced some fantastic results.

On Saturday Jess raced the 5K course and came 15^th in her single before doubling up with a girl from Marlow rowing club on Sunday. The girls finished in a very impressive second place.

These results will likely gain her an invite to spring assessments, to be in contention for selection to compete at Munich regatta in May.

The rest of our boatclub were also working hard over the weekend, training at home and racing at Nottingham Head of the Trent, where we had a win from our Senior boy’s quad and another win from one of our J15 boys eight.

Our J15 girls and boys also raced very well, getting the chance to practice on a longer course, all in good preparation for Schools Head and the Scullery in March.

All crews did the boatclub proud this weekend.

Well rowed.

#TeamBMS.