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GLRF hosted a booth at the 2014 USRowing Southwest Juniors Regional Championships at Lake Natoma, east of Sacramento, California, United States, 03 - 04 May 2014.
The regatta followed by a week, the 2014 WIRA Championships, held at the same location.
Warm weather brought lots of happy faces as the crews battled it out on the course. The regatta is so packed with juniors entries that Friday afternoon is devoted to time trials just to sort out the weekend entries.
Athletes, Moms, and Dads visited the GLRF booth, even pushing the ever more wild and crazy spandex on the sometimes shy teammate, son or daugher. Unlike last year, when GLRF was shamed for displaying the naked calendars at a juniors event, a Juniors coach praised the GLRF presence and commended the many sales items and how they delighted the junior rowers
The big sellers at the GLRF booth were sunglasses, lots of wild and crazy shorts, and the GLRF BiSweptual shirts.
For the third time in four years, GLRF hosted a booth at the 2014 Western Intercollegiate Rowing Association (WIRA) Regatta Championship at Lake Natoma, east of Sacramento, California, United States 26 - 27 Apr 2014.
Like the 2014 San Diego Crew Classic, rain (in California?!) threatened to dampen the regatta vibe. Crews practicing on Friday afternoon returned to the shore soaked to the bone. Luckily, the temperature was warm enough that most of the mens crews were happy to strip to the waist (and sometimes a bit lower ...) and the womens crews made it a sports bra afternoon !!!! o)
Heavy rain continued through Friday night but stopped at 5:30 am, just before all of the vendors began to set up. The races started on time and the wind didn't pick up until Sunday midday. Sunday's championships victories went to a variety of talented crews: University of California, Santa Barbara, Western Washington University, Sacramento State University, Loyola Marymount University, and San Diego State University, among many of the victors.
GLRF was happy to welcome visitors at our booth from almost every school at the regatta. As usual, the wild and crazy spandex shorts and tights were the big hit although many of the rowers stopped to ogle the naked rowing calendars. The GLRF Bisweptual shirts and Sweet Release shirts were once again the big hits.
For the first time since the Gay + Lesbian Rowing Federation began hosting a vendors booth at the San Diego Crew Classic in 2004, rain threatened to complicate the booth layout. Luckily, the rain clouds cleared at 06h30 on Saturday morning and with some quick towel work, the GLRF booth was ready to open for visitors dry and with all gear on display at 07h00.
The booth featured the 2014 Warwick Naked Rowers calendars (men and women), a staple of the booth for several years, and the huge collection of wild and crazy spandex racing shorts, tights and headbands. The boys have gotten over their "concerns" and the market share of buyers for the crazy spandex seemed to be close to 60% for men with many of the guys opting for the shorter, "volleyball" cut shorts!
The GLRF BiSweptual and the Sweet Release shirts proved popular as well as the Come Out and Row shirts.
Thanks to the generosity of Tom Gallagher, owner of Sykes North America, the booth was able to showcase a wide selection of Under Armour shirts for sale.
The weekend weather, as usual for San Diego, was sunny, clear, and warm. The only challenge came when the afternoon winds began to pick up, forcing the starting line officials to repeatedly realign the starting lineups.
The Crew Classic draws 3700 junior, university, open, and masters competitors from all over North America, competing in the eights-only 2000m. sprint race. The most notable international club was a team from the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club rowing squad, which fielded both mens and womens entries. GLRF was happy to share our membership materials with several of the Hong Kong rowers who visited the booth.
The just released World Rowing press release highlights some signficant rule changes adopted at the 2013 FISA Extraordinary Congress. Given that most national rowing federations use or inherit the FISA rules for their own rowing rules, these changes will have some significant impact on local regattas.
Masters Rowing:
Adaptive Rowing:
Regatta starts:
Regatta finishes:
Gender reassignment is now codified:
We'll post more when there is more information about gender reassignment. If there is a doctor in the GLRF community, we'd love it if you added a comment on the importance of adding hyperandrogenism to the medical provisions.
Get ready to test your winter training at the 2013 Mid Winter Meltdown, an indoor regatta hosted by the Mendota Rowing Club in Madison, Wisconsin.
The event will take place on Saturday, 26 Jan 2013.
Early entry registration deadline is 21 Jan 2013
Entry fees are as follows:
Early - $25
Ater 21 Jan - $30
Day of - $35
Biggest news for this year is the regatta has a new location - the University of Wisconsin Porter Boathouse. With that news comes the disappointment of no on-site food ...
With the winner goes the spoils: up to four competitors who qualify in one of the four events, 1000m, 2000m, 6000m, and relays, will receive airfare to Boston to compete at the Crash-B's. Nice!!!!
Attached is the registration packet.
Today is National (International) Coming Out Day. For some, it gives them a chance to muster the courage to make their sexual orientation a little or a lot more public in a celebratory and accepting manner. For the politicos, it is an opportunity to raise awareness of the gay community and point to the high profile 'inductees' as proof that all famous and high profile closeted politicians, media celebrities, and athletes need and should come out to serve as role models for society.
We might as well call this National Coming Out Week or National Coming Out Month. On Wednesday, 10 October 2012, the United States Anti-Doping Agency published a scathing report of the rampant and coordinated doping that took place on the US Postal Service cycling team. As the report went public, eight or nine high levels athletes were forced to or felt obligated to come out with their complicity. The admissions sometimes flew in the face of previously steadfast denials of doping.
All of this points to one essential fact: coming out is very often a painful and uncomfortable process. As human beings, we can't help but think or worry what others will think. We are very often in denial about our own suspicions about other's sexual orientation. Not knowing or acknowleding the truth is easier. As rowers, a decision to go public with our sexual orientation might and can cost someone a seat in the boat (yes, it happened this summer in Southern California, when a rower told his boat that he was gay). It can result in isolation at a club (as relayed by a female GLRF member who came out at her club in the San Francisco Bay Area, of all places). At all levels of the sport, there might and will be the uncomfortable silence in the locker room and in the showers.
October is also National Breast Cancer Awareness month and that illustrates a more poignant fact. Your teammates in your boat and at your club are grappling with a myriad of difficult news in their lives: their boyfriend/girlfriend or partner has left them, their parents are getting a divorce, they just found out their HIV status has changed, or that they have been diagnosed with cancer.
The whole process of coming out is awkward for everyone. Straight friends and club acquaintances can feel uncomfortable, either not knowing what to say or not wanting to suddenly give off the wrong cues or be seen by others as having 'suspicious' tendencies if they are 'too accepting.' Maybe what we need in rowing at least, is an International Acceptance Day.
Share your stories of how or when you came out to your crew or boathouse in the GLRF All Oars Network Member Lounge Forum.
We just posted a calendar event for the Rowing Avignon Cup race, which is an 8's only race. Last year it was held over two days in November. This year it will be a one-day format, and held a good month earlier, on 14 October. The prizes are phenomenal. First prize is a brand new boat, an 8!!! Wow The race format is really unusual in that you race both a head race and a sprint race on the same day. The other thing that makes the regatta interesting is that all boats are equipped with GPS trackers so that locations and times are recorded instantly.
Craftsbury Sculling Center is launching a new event called the Henley-on-Hosmer regatta. The event will take place on Saturday and Sunday, 06 - 07 October. It's a singles-only race spanning the full length of Big Hosmer lake (6400m.). At a minimum, everyone will race twice. The race is being held in conjunction with Craftsbury's Octoberfest celebration. They are offering great packages of $95/person/night with 3 meals included! Does that include all the beer you can drink?
The wonderful Pairs Head of the River race in London is scheduled for Saturday, 13 October. Registration is well underway and In fact, the deadline is just around the corner: 01 October. Not a bad entry fee: GBP 32. What a great focus, doubles and pairs only! The 4000m. race runs from Mortlake to Hammersmith, you race down river at the ebb, and the Thames river is closed during the race. Nice!!!
Not just a bucket list item. We need to make this a regular GLRF community-coordinated event!!!
I first discovered this event through the GLRF Rowing Videos page. I clicked on a video labeled 'Traversée de paris à l'aviron, 2012.' For those not fluent in French, it means seeing the sights of Paris as a rower, roughly translated. The event was held on Sunday, 23 September 2012.
2012 marks the 5th year that the event has been held, hosted by the regional rowing association (okay, Comité départemental d'aviron) in partnership with the general consul of the Hauts-de-Seine and the Paris area rowing league (alright! it's "la Ligue Ile de France d'aviron"). Over 1,000 rowers comprising 200 teams take to the water for a round trip, 30 km. tour of the best Paris has to offer, from the water.
The trip launches and returns from the Base nautique de l’île de
Monsieur, Sèvres. On the first leg, rowers head upstream to the Quai Saint Bernard, then head downstream, past the launching point to the Pont de Suresnes (name for a bridge), and finally turn around and head back to the launch point for a fantastic family-style meal with the French! Rowers launch at 0700h. and return anywhere from 0930h. to 1100h., depending on whether you have @runegartner in the boat ...
These kind of events are perfectly suited to be GLRF community-organized events that will help to bring gay and lesbian rowers together. Oh hey, look at that, there's a GLRF group for Paris. Who knew? Hint hint ....
Let's do it, over and over and over!!! Here's the brochure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2ZqDa1BMrg
Backwards, a 'rowmance' movie starring Sarah Megan Thomas and James Van Der Beek, opens nationwide this month in the United States. Rowers everywhere will enjoy the story of an Olympic athlete struggling to find her place after losing a seat on the national team. Set in Philadelphia, there are great shots of Boathouse Row and rowing on the Schuykil River.
Best quote:
http://www.glrf.info/gotchagallery/data/thumbnails/300/Abi.Instense.jpgCheck out the movie poster, movies stills, and some of the production images at the GLRF Gotcha! Gallery. (For those who notice ... check out how we labeled the movie stills ... hope you enjoy the image titles!).
Want to put a group of rowers together to see the movie? What better excuse to blow off your next morning practice? .... Use GLRF's new Calendar RSVP feature to find out how many are interested in seeing the movie and as a tool to determine a count for group tickets (see below for more information).
Want to get notified of a new event in your regional calendar? Now you can 'follow' both a GLRF regional calendar as well as a particular calendar event and receive notifications when new events are added or updates are posted for one event!
Here is a list of the cities screening the movie and their opening dates. We'll update the list if we get any theater information for outside the United States:
Ambler, PA - Ambler Theatre - opens September 21
Bala Cynwyd, PA - Bala Theatre - opens September 28
Beverly Hills, CA - Music Hall 3 - opens September 21
Boston, MA - Boston Common 19 - opens September 28
Bryn Mawr, PA - Bryn Mawr Film Institute - opens September 21
Jacksonville, FL - AMC Regency 24 - opens September 28
Manhattan, NY - Cinema Village 3 - opens September 21
New Haven, CT - BTC Criterion Cinemas 7 - opens September 28
Oklahoma City, OK - Crossroads Mall 16 - opens September 28
Philadelphia, PA - Ritz East Twin - opens September 21
San Francisco, CA - Sundance Kabuki Cinemas - opens September 28
Seattle, WA - Oak Tree 6 - opens September 28
Washington DC - West End Cinema - opens September 28
West Newton, MA - West Newton Cinema - opens September 28
If you're just naturally a Type A organizer, add a calendar event for your city and date, and of course, click 'RSVP' in the 'create event' feature block selection.
Here is the 411 on group tickets:
Each theatre chain sets their own group rates and group rates usually begin at 25 people or more and some have assigned seats and some don’t and some have group rates that vary by showtime. If your group is smaller than 25, you can probably still arrange for a block of tickets but you may not be able to get a group discount.
Contact (email) Jackie Papier to arrange group tickets. We recommend going through her rather than dealing directly with the theater because she has more pull.
As widely reported in news media around Chicago, and also in the LGBT news site, Chicago Windy Times, Jenn Gibbons, a Chicago-area rowing coach for both juniors and adult rowing programs, was attacked and sexually assaulted in a remote lakeshore area of Lake Michigan.
Coach Gibbons was in the middle of a 1500-mile rowing trip around Lake Michigan to raise funds for breast cancer survivors trying to live healthier lives.
She serves as the competitive coach for the LGBT-friendly Chicago Rowing Union.
Read the full story here.
