Dear Editor, I am writing you this email as a reaction on recent articles that Northeastern News published about the men’s crew team. My name is Marko Vukovic and I am a senior majoring in psychology, class of 2004. I am also an international student from Yugoslavia, a rower for last 13 years and a holder of a World Championship’s bronze medal from 2001 for my country. Currently I am in a 4 seat of our varsity eight. I felt it was up to me as the oldest and the most experienced one in our team to contact you and try to help you by giving you some pointers and explaining a few things about the sport of rowing.

You see, when a person decides to get into this sport he really soon realizes that all the fun he can get is through being really good and fast since almost traditionally, the things like fame and media do not exactly go hand in hand with rowing. Naturally, speed of the boat doesn’t come by itself but is rather a product of incredible amount of extremely hard work, mainly through the fall and winter, on land, preparing for the season that starts in April and then flies by before you even noticed, ending in first week of June. Last year our first varsity boat placed 5th IN THE NATION. (IRA Regatta) I hope that you realize that this result made the men’s crew team the most successful athletic team that Northeastern had in 2003. Still, and I believe I am not exaggerating at all if I say that we were absolutely marginalized in the media. It is ok and we don’t expect to appear on ESPN since rowing is not nearly as big as college basketball for example, but we definitely do expect to be given appropriate credit in Northeastern News at least, so that the Northeastern community can have the right picture about the work that we are doing.

This year our first varsity boat looks even better and faster than the last year’s. After today’s polls, available at www.row2k.com, our first varsity boat is ranked 4th IN THE NATION, by the votes of collegiate rowing coaches. In the beginning of this season, two weeks ago we,the first varsity eight, with only 3 weeks of water practice went to San Diego to one of the most prestigious collegiate races, San Diego Crew Classic, racing University of California at Berkley, University of Washington, Temple, Oregon State, Stanford and a few others, placing second, 2.5 seconds behind Cal and 6 whole seconds in front of UW!!! For the record, UW placed 2nd IN THE NATION last year, and Cal won 4 CONSECUTIVE NATIONAL TITLES until last year when Harvard dominated. The media response (NU News) on our 6 seconds victory over UW and a close race with Cal (which NU crew wasn’t able to achieve in years and only a few teams nationwide were able to do so in the past few years) was a huge article about WOMEN’S crew team with a big headlines, a story of how women’s crew had a close one with Boston College, which is not even nationally ranked, and a totally random picture of women’s fours paddling. (One tip, college rowing is all about eights, especially the fast ones) However, you did mention us, as a trailing…not even a story, but the report of location where we went with the race times in the end of women’s crew team’s story. There was no mention of who Cal and UW are in rowing and why this was a huge step for our (MEN’s) crew program. This week’s edition of NU News came out in pretty much the same fashion as the last week’s one, only this time women’s team got swept by Syracuse, which is placed EIGHTEENTH nationally, and of course that story deserved page headline more then men’s team’s humiliation of BU.

Referring again to college basketball (absolutely nothing against NU basketball team in any way), just imagine what would happen if our basketball team dominated any of the National top teams; how would you report about that and for how many days.

Reporting like this is definitely not fair and more so is disrespectful of men’s rowing program as a whole, head coach John Pojednic and the work he’s doing, not to mention all of us on the team including all three boats, our first varsity eight, JV and freshmen that are both also having a successful season and are absolutely thankworthy for the speed of our varsity boat for racing us in practices.

My hopes are that your main goal as a journalist is to be objective and truthful in your reports what I strongly believe that you are and that you want to be, and that in that fashion you will pay better attention to who is who in Northeastern University athletic teams community. Please take this letter as a constructive criticism and if you wish to contact me further on you can do so by my email or phone number and I will be more than glad to talk to you.

Sincerely, Marko Vukovic

Marko Vukovic Email: [email protected] Phone: 617 784 6320