The Rustlers women’s quad took on two of the biggest head races in Western Canada racing the 5 km Gorge and 8 km Elk Lake in late October.

The crew of April Stanko, Lacey Longworth, Kim Noble and Alicia Dyck used a borrowed boat from the Calgary Rowing Club to compete at the Victoria races. “The older wooden boat probably added about 30 seconds to their time, but they were still competitive also considering they hadn’t been able to train outdoors for a couple of weeks,” says coach Peter Walsh, who also made the trip with the crew.

“Long distance river racing in rowing can often come down to getting the right break or not being held up by a slower crew but the girls certainly learned that they could row with the best crews in western Canada be the competitive,” he adds.

“This Rustler crew from a small town college in northeastern Alberta turned many heads including two coaches from UVic who were quite complementary about their skills and boat speed. They found it hard to believe that the total accumulated years of rowing experience in our boat did not come close to that of the least experienced rower in the UVic boat,” says Walsh.

The Gorge race features the narrows, a hazardous place in the race where crews struggle against the tide. It’s an exciting part of the race for spectators, but nerve wracking for coaches and competitors. “It’s on the way to the race start and our girls went through with little difficulty,” says Walsh.

Lakeland’s crew was in the open/varsity women’s quad event rowing against veteran crews from UBC, UVic, SFU and University of the Fraser Valley that included some national team members. “Our goal was to crack into the top half of the pool, but we had some bad luck with another boat,” says Walsh.

On a tricky part of the course, where passing isn’t allowed, the SFU crew moved to overtake the Rustler boat and made contact with its bow. Then SFU went off course and got tangled up along the shoreline. An ensuing time delay by the officials was a set back that the Lakeland quad couldn’t overcome, although they did beat the SFU crew, finishing sixth out of the eight boats.

The final day’s race was on Elk Lake where the national rowing team trains. The 8 km race was a longer distance than the crew is used to racing and coach Walsh provided a strategy of “row like hell and don’t let anybody pass you.”

“They had good hand speed and clean blade work at the start of the race and this technique along with the now familiar Lakeland grunt carried them to a fourth place finish,” he says. The race also featured the quad beating back a challenge from an American crew at the finish line.

Watch race highlights on .