Another fantastic performance for our novice women yesterday at Clare Novices.. The race is a 750m side by side race up the Cam, so a lot further than the crew rowed last weekend at Emma Sprints. But their strong and consistent rhythm got them through to the semi-finals!

In the first round, NWI was against Pembroke NWII, and the crew won by a comfortable margin. Next round, they were drawn against Caius NWI. Allthough quite close to begin with, they pulled away after about 200m and soon Caius were nowhere in sight. The third round was against Emmanuel NWI. After losing to them in the quarter finals of Emma Sprints last weekend, the pressure was on. But as ever, the crew remained calm and composed and despite a nail-biting race, where the distance between the two was not much, Lucy/Hughes crossed the finish line first!

Then it was on to the semi-finals, and after a quick topping up of bananas and cereal bars, the crew was rowing back down to Marshal for the fourth time that day and to take on Downing NWI. By this time the crew had been down at the water and rowing for nearly 6 hours, but they were determined to not give Downing and easy victory…and they didn’t. Much like the previous race, they were not far from Downing at any point in the race but a combination of tiredness and a broken rigger meant that the day’s racing was finally over.

The crew can be really very proud of their achievement – to get to the semi-finals and compete alongside colleges like Downing, Lady Margaret and First and Third Boat Clubs is a fantastic result after only 4 weeks of rowing together and 8 weeks after learning to row. Congratulations go to the whole team including Sally Mole as Cox and Stella Lempidaki as Coach for training the girls to such a standard. Truly well done to you all!