Virginia State Rowing Championship Recap

With the State Championship complete, our regular season comes to a close. I’m proud of the effort put forth by the Stuart Crew Team over these last months—rowers, coaches, and parents.

Yesterday we entered 9 boats … 6 competed in a final and 4 boats earned medals. Each of our medal winning boats has their own story.

• Our senior women’s double (Hannah/Mackenzie) was repeatedly beat by Gloucester this season. They knew that their path to medal went through that boat. In a great final row, they not only beat Grandby and Grassfield, but they took Gloucester by over 7 seconds and closed within 3.4 seconds of 2nd place Colgan to earn a bronze.
• Our lightweight men’s quad (Markus/Noah/Sam/Vince) has found themselves competing against open-weight boats all season and that was true yesterday as well. These guys worked hard over the season to improve their fitness/erg scores, and when viewed from a power-to-weight perspective they stack up well against larger boys. They demonstrated yesterday that it’s not so much size, but hard work that matters—earning bronze in the varsity open-weight men’s quad event. As VASRA’s fastest lightweight men’s quad, they’ve earned an automatic bid to represent Virginia at the Scholastic Rowing Association National Championship in NJ in two weeks.
• Our women’s senior quad (Erin/Isabelle/India/Pasha) faced their nemesis in Western Albemarle, last year’s State and National Champion. Western brought three strong boats, so the heats to finals included these boats plus multiple Madison entries, Hylton, and Gar-Field. In the final, our girls admittedly had a bad start off the platform and got behind. However, they didn’t quit and in a photo finish, edged a Western Albemarle boat by inches to earn silver medals.
• Finally, our men’s junior single (Steven) … a late season injury to one of our rowers meant we had to break up one of our men’s quads into a single and a double. Steven had less than two weeks to adapt to the single, which is the most challenging shell to row well. His racing debut was supposed to be last week at Mathews, but his event was canceled due to the weather, so the race yesterday was his first 1X competition. In an impressive last 500m he traded what appeared to be a third place finish for second by sprinting past the Gloucester entry, earning the silver.

At this point we have at least the men’s lightweight quad that will compete at Nationals. Based on the medal finishes of our other three boats, these rowers may also get chance to attend pending the results of the SRAA petitioning process. We’ll know for sure later this week.

This upcoming week is the Stotesbury Regatta—the largest high school regatta in the world. Practice will continue this week for those rowers slated for Stotebury or possibly going on to Nationals. Some of our rowers will not be able to participate in Stotesbury due to IB exams. We will load the trailer on Wednesday so it can depart early on Thursday. 

Stotesbury Cup Regatta Lineups

Girls’ Junior Double – Brooke Carmody, Tucker Rawlings-Kintzing

Boys’ Junior Four – Parker Leonard, Julian Cruz, Robert Sidney, Kurt Finkenstaedt, Brandon Tran (Long Luu – alternate)

Girls’ Junior Four – Giselle Moya, Noorah Aldaghlas, Ryan Aust, Margaret Turner, Julienne Chollette, Vivian Tran (5 of the 6 will compete, the other will be an alternate)

Girls’ Junior Quad – Isabelle Schrock, Mackenzie Wiley, India Verardi, Pasha McGuigan

Boys’ Senior Double – Christopher Witkowski, Warner Gates

Boys’ Senior Quad – Markus Ferrell, Noah Taylor, Sam Ferrell, Vincent Gioseffi

Boys’ Senior Single – Steven Mullane

 [slideshow added to new SmugMug account]

See you at the boathouse …
Coach Mike

J.E.B. Stuart Crew. Rowing Strong for 50 Years.