Mansfield College Boat Club
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 Longbridges boathouse (shared with other colleges) and rowing blade colours | |||||||||||||
| Coordinates | 51°44′37″N 1°15′00″W / 51.743503°N 1.249915°W | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Home water | River Thames | ||||||||||||
| Founded | 1965 | ||||||||||||
Key people | |||||||||||||
| University | University of Oxford | ||||||||||||
| Colours | |||||||||||||
| Affiliations | British Rowing (boat code MAN) Homerton College, Cambridge (Sister college) | ||||||||||||
| Website | mansfieldcollegeboatclub | ||||||||||||
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (February 2013) |
Mansfield College Boat Club (MCBC) is a rowing club for members of Mansfield College, Oxford. It was founded in 1965 by a group of students led by Michael Mahony, later College Dean. It is run by the Boat Club committee, which is elected annually by members of the Mansfield College student body. It is affiliated to Oxford University Rowing Clubs (OURCs).
The club currently shares a club room and boat storage space with St Hilda's College Boat Club at the Longbridges boathouse, which opened in April 1997. On 4 July 2005 Longbridges boathouse was hit by an arson attack which destroyed most of the equipment owned by MCBC. However, thanks to the efforts of the committee, the college and the generosity of alumni, the club was able to replace old equipment with newer boats and two new sets of blades.[2]
Results
Early years
The club fields a Men's First VIII and a Women's First VIII in the annual inter-collegiate Torpids and Summer Eights bumps racing competitions. As a new entrant, initially placed at the bottom of the rankings, the club achieved several years of regular success in the 1960s and 1970s as it slowly worked its way up through weaker boats to reach its natural level.
Recent form
In May 2016 the club achieved its highest positions in Summer Eights to date, with the Men's First VIII reaching 3rd place in Division Two and the Women's First VIII reaching 6th place in Division Two (winning blades in the process). In March 2017 the Men's First VIII won blades in Torpids for the third consecutive year, reaching 4th place in Division Two. In the 2017 Summer Eights campaign, the Women's First VIII was joined by Canadian national rower and Stroke of the 2017 Women's Boat Race Emily Cameron. The Women's First VIII had a very successful campaign, bumping up to 3rd place in Division Two. The Men's First VIII went down by one place to 4th in Division Two, placing the Women's First VIII above the Men's First VIII for the first time in history.
The club usually fields a Men's Second VIII and a Women's Second VIII in both competitions. In Torpids 2017, the Women's Second VIII, nicknamed the "American Eagle" because of the high proportion of American visiting students, won blades for the first time in history. By Torpids 2019, the strength of the Women's Second VIII was such that they bumped into fixed divisions, meaning they do not have to qualify for Torpids in its next iteration. In May 2016 the Men's Second VIII reached fixed divisions in Summer Eights for the first time, winning blades in the process. [3]
In Summer Eights 2009 the Women's First VIII won blades with a crew featuring three university level 'blues' rowers and were the 10th crew in Division Two. The presence of three blues in one boat was unprecedented in Mansfield's Boat Club history, and goes some way to proving the oft-repeated notion that Mansfield College punches above its weight at inter-collegiate sport.
While 2020 saw the cancellation of many major rowing events due to flooding, high stream and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, three Mansfield rowers were selected as part of the squads that would have raced on Boat Race day. Moreover, the selection of Martha Birtles[4] for the OUWBC blue boat and Caspar Jopling[5] for the OUBC blue boat was a first in that both university openweight blue boats featured Mansfield rowers in the same year.
Notable members
The most famous alumnus of MCBC is Donald MacDonald, who was President of Oxford University Boat Club in the mutiny year of 1987, the events of which received considerable publicity in the book True Blue: The Oxford Boat Race Mutiny and the film True Blue.
See also
References
- ^ a b "Oxford University Rowing Clubs". OURCs. Retrieved 17 March 2013.
- ^ "MCBC". www.mansfieldcollegeboatclub.co.uk. Retrieved 18 June 2018.
- ^ "Bumps records". Mansfield College Boat Club. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
- ^ "OUWBC Race day crews". The Boat Race. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
- ^ "OUBC Race day crews". The Boat Race. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
External links
- Eights Week Chart, 1980-2008 (use menus for other charts)
- Mansfield College Boat Club Website
