Starting the season we saw a similar sized squad to the previous year with strong numbers within the junior squad. Again the girls achieved countless successes on and off the water, where they continued to strive to only be better than their last.

The 2021/2022 season started with the implementation of the culture where we are only as strong as our slowest or weakest member, this continued to give the girls a sense of encouragement and work together as a team. With the rowing community growing immensely we have seen the usual training times on the river become chocker, this saw the change to our training times where we opted for evening rows, alongside the club rowers. This was great as the girls became familiar with some of the club rowers themselves. We kicked every training session off with a good run to the 2km bridge and back. With Covid-19 restrictions in place and being rampant around the community we decided not to start the season’s first regatta in Ashburton but decided to put a fun local “head to head sprint regatta” for family and friends, races comprised of coxswain vs novice 1x, senior 4-+ vs Junior 4x+, coaches 2- vs Senior 2-, we ended the day with a crash course on rowing for the parents and saw 2 parent 4x+ battle it out over 500m, everyone involved on the day thoroughly enjoyed themselves. We kicked the official racing off at Otago champs where our novice girls joined forces with the Canterbury Rowing Club novices, this was the only regatta until Maadi cup that saw a ‘regular’ regatta setting. After our well-deserved Christmas break, we had a week of training and then packed up down to Twizel again for Canterbury Champs, this was our first time in a ‘red light’ setting where we shared a zone with Canterbury Rowing Club & Cashmere High School. It was Different but we are very thankful to those who made it happen. We had our camp locally this year, where we had the river all to ourselves. Camp had definitely proved its success with the girls’ improvement of technique and fitness. Next stop was South Island Champs the girls put on some great performances in the heats but in good ol’ fashion the wind came along and cancelled the finals with the medals being handed to the fastest times. With the last two regattas before Maadi all girls were showing great improvements and each time celebrating it like a win. During this time and leading up towards Maadi it became important that we kept the girls and their families safe from Covid. We became one of the only squads in Christchurch to finish the season Covid free. We took 5 girls to Maadi, Ash, Stella, Andie, Libby & Georgia. During our Maadi prep we had Angus Coull, Becky Tuke, Josh Rodger & Shannon Cox all impart their experience and years of rowing knowledge, this gave the girls some new found confidence. The girls gave their best performances but unfortunately fell short to the strong north island squads.

I was joined by Greta Hawke, Tasman O’Sullivan & Hallie Wheeler these three are all Avonside Alum and did an amazing job, I definitely couldn’t’ t have done it without them.

All coaches, staff & families involved are extremely proud of the efforts made throughout the entire season by the girls, and I am sure that we will be seeing good things from them in the future.

Marewa Cryer  

Head Coach