Ephs on the Road: Women’s Crew

Julia Lim

In “Ephs on the road,” the Record publishes photos taken on the Dispo app by members of sports teams while traveling away from campus. This week, the Record featured Julia Lim ’23 and the women’s crew team on their trip to Worcester, Mass. last weekend for the Donahue Cup.

Rower, friend, sister, 7-seat, Ms. Emily Hugo ’23 is the plug — and by plug we mean she’s-in-the-Normatec-plugged-into-the-truck’s-outlet. Some say that being chronically injured would stop them from racing in two back-to-back races, especially considering that one of them is a grand final. However, here on the crew team we say: “Okay, but have you tried marinating in the arm balloon between races?” Talk about gritty!

Gabby Fazzalari ’25 is pictured wearing a lovely pair of cow socks. These socks are a new tradition for WWC [Williams Women’s Crew], where an individual in each boat gets to wear the pair for a race. Afterward, they choose another person in the boat who they think made the boat feel exceptionally fast to wear them in the next race. We haven’t quite figured out the logistics yet — like do we wash them? Are they a double-sock sort of situation? Unclear.

After a long day of racing, the Donahue Cup award ceremony commences! Williams can be spotted in a pack to the right. We choose to travel in packs to impose a threatening presence while passing other teams. After all, wouldn’t you be scared if 40+ strong athletes all dressed in Williams wizard coats approached you? Sadly, we did not obtain the cup this year, but with strong efforts from all boats and a few wins under our belt, I would say we solidly earned a colander, or perhaps a serving dish.

As the last flag drops and horn honks at the finish line of Quinsigamond Lake to bring another successful racing day to a close, we all unleash our engineering alter egos and begin to de-rig our racing shells for travel. The final step of the de-rigging process before we can access our beloved Panera orders is to fully clothe our boats in their cozy purple snuggies and return them back to the trailer. Lola Kovalski ʼ25 is pictured doing so while wearing her sunglasses upside down, because she is quirky like that, obviously.