Six weeks ago, three of the four guys in the M4x going to ACRA had never sat in a rowing shell. April 6, the day after Easter, Tyler Burkett, Conner Richardson, and Jay Pollard came down to the dock for their first row. They're all class of 2027. May 17 they race at Melton Hill Lake in Oak Ridge against crews that have been rowing for years.
We're not going up there for a medal. We're going to take clean strokes and keep taking them, and see what that gets us at the finish.
Bow to stern: Pollard, Burkett, Richardson, Abraham Mako on stroke. Mako rowed at Chattanooga Junior Rowing, co-founded Chattanooga State Rowing with Jack Cawood, then transferred to UTC and helped get the program back on the water in Fall 2025. He's the experience in the boat. The bow three are still learning the catch and the timing. They follow him out of stroke seat.
Burkett, Richardson, and Pollard are U.S. Army active duty, finishing UTC degrees alongside the service. They build practice around obligations that aren't optional. They show up anyway.
May 2 we took the boat up to Oak Ridge two weeks early for a scrimmage on the ACRA course. The water at Melton is wider and flatter than what they're used to on the river. A crew has to row next to other crews on the actual race water at some point, not just at home. Those miles are in the legs now.
UTC owns sixteen shells, and they've all lived on the team trailer, outside, since 2023. The Empacher 4x "Chattanooga," from the late 80s, has a hole in the hull big enough to put a fist through. Most of the fleet is over twenty years old. The newest hull is a 2020 Swift 1x the boys named "Scrappy." That's why the four of them joined Lookout Rowing Club this semester for usable water, and why the boat racing Saturday is a Vespoli loaner.
After Saturday the work changes shape, not character. A heated room at Maclellan Gym with ergs on the floor. A 20×80 pole barn at the boathouse so the shells worth keeping live under cover. A men's eight and a women's four filled out by September. Alumni back in seats for the Hooch.
Saturday first. Then the next stroke.