A little-known group of U of T student-athletes went to Lake Fanshawe in London, Ontario with gold-medal hopes and aspirations to succeed. This is indeed what they did, and now they want to tell the world about it.
The Blues were competing against a number of other universities in the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) Rowing Championship on October 30 and 31. They were considered underdogs against powerhouse teams from Queen’s, Western, and Brock.
The day, however, was less than ideal, as inclement weather, including high winds, forced some events to be modified and others to be cancelled. For instance, the 1400m time trial had to be turned into a race against the clock, instead of teams competing head-to-head: each team completed the course once by themselves, and the team with the best time emerged victorious.
Two duos accounted for the majority of the Blues’ success at Fanshawe. Jessica Leung and Lillian Parsons on the women’s side, and Ming-Chang Tsai and Kiran Van Rijn on the men’s accounted for all of U of T’s top-five finishes at the event.
The best result came from Tsai and Van Rijn, who won the men’s heavyweight double event. This helped the men’s team capture a fourth-place finish in the overall standings. Also, Leung and Parsons finished in fifth place in the lightweight women’s double race.
“We take whatever small victories we can,” said Christian Ventresca, who serves as part-time coach and was on the team last year. “We were the only school to win a race that wasn’t Brock, Western, or Queen’s.”
In fact, the three aforementioned schools won 15 out of 16 gold medals handed out at the championships. This is not surprising, as most of these teams have full-time coaching staffs.
Ventresca pointed out that U of T has a different philosophy than the other competing schools in terms of athletics and academics: “We have some elite people here, but you are students first at this school. Most people come to U of T to do school, but this is not a handicap. We didn’t come here for basket-weaving, but we were still able to compete.”
According to Ventresca, the time and effort put into recruiting can account for much of that success. For him this is an endless process.
“We definitely put a lot of effort into recruiting,” he said. “Our goal is to turn people into good rowers this year and stars next year.”
“We try to recruit 18 rowers each season,” Ventresca continued. “They race against other novices for the year.”
Tsai and Rijn are obvious standout performers for the team this year, as they have developed into gold medal heroes. Ming Tsai has also competed at a professional level for Taiwan in past world championship events.
The coach also picked out Jennifer Sauks as one athlete to keep an eye on in women’s rowing. He sees an enormous amount of potential in her.
“Jennifer Sauks started in September as a novice and we taught her how to row. At the end of the year we needed someone to step into the women’s eight team, which she did, and did a great job. She is only in first year and definitely one to look out for.”
The only drawback that Christian noted about rowing at U of T is “a lot of preparation for not a lot of competition.” One has to be incredibly dedicated to the sport to compete for U of T.
However, there are plenty of current and former U of T students who have had success on the world stage in rowing events that can act as inspirations for any novice university rower. This list includes the likes of Mara Jones, Fiona Milne, and Emma Robinson.
“Mara is in med school and Fiona Milne is a past captain of the U of T rowing team,” said Ventresca. “The glamour girl for U of T is certainly Emma Robinson, who started as a pure novice in 1996. Two years later she was on the national team.”
Jones and Milne represented Canada at the Olympics in Athens this past summer. Robinson was able to overcome thyroid cancer in 1999 and still win the women’s doubles gold medal at the World Championship the same year.
The other motivating factors are the memories and experiences one gains by being part of an athletics organization at U of T. Ventresca believes that those experiences are invaluable in the long run.
“When you leave school you’re not going to remember an exam or a professor. The rowing team allows you to build a group of experiences you will take with you in the future,” commented Ventresca. “There are a group of guys from the team that I still see on a regular basis.”
