By LAUREN WEEKS
SPORTS EDITOR

Many college rowing teams have the opportunity to row all year round on the water with no problem. That is not the case, however, for many northeastern schools, especially St. Lawrence, which is known for long, and extremely cold winters.

This long winter season often puts SLU behind other schools when it comes time to race in the spring, but hopefully that will change this year for the Saints, as a new 16 station indoor rowing tank room was recently installed.

Durham Boat Company, Inc. is the leading provider of indoor rowing tanks in the world, and has been designing and installing commercial indoor rowing tanks for 23 years. According to the Dreher company website, these facilities are primarily used for offseason rowing, muscle specific conditioning and technique training.

So far the company has sold 34 indoor rowing facilities of various sizes (2 to 16 stations) to universities, high schools, fitness centers, club rowing programs and National Training Centers. “They’re an excellent resource because we don’t have access to the r i v e r from November until March and that historically has been a disadvantage for us,” said Alex McKenna ’18. “Basically we are going to kill it in the spring, and we’re all really thankful that we were able to get them installed.”

Dreher has provided indoor rowing tank equipment in the past four years to Tyne United Rowing Club, Durham University, Ridley College, Agnes Irwin School, Korean National Rowing Federation, Kansas State University, Tabor Academy and Suffield Academy.

The company reported that two other tanks were on order for January 2016 installation at St. Lawrence University and Maritime Rowing Club in Connecticut.

“It’s amazing,” commented Jack Leahy ’18. “The fact that such a young program like ours, in a location like ours with such long winters, is able to use these tanks is incredibly fortunate. This is going to impact our spring season in a tremendous way. We are all anticipating huge success and are certainly now more motivated than ever!”The team will travel to Tampa over spring break before kicking off the 2016 spring season in Rochester on April 3.

Check out the Saints Instagram page (saints_crew) for more news and picture of the rowing tanks.