Area scullers shrug off cold at second Flick

Posted 3/24/14

SCH juniors Will Tasman (left) and Zac Cohen made their 2014 in a lightweight double last Sunday. (Photo by Tom Utescher) by Tom Utescher Although spring had officially arrived in between the first …

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Area scullers shrug off cold at second Flick

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SCH juniors Will Tasman (left) and Zac Cohen made their 2014 in a lightweight double last Sunday. (Photo by Tom Utescher) SCH juniors Will Tasman (left) and Zac Cohen made their 2014 in a lightweight double last Sunday. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

by Tom Utescher

Although spring had officially arrived in between the first and second installments of the Manny Flick series of crew races, it wasn’t any warmer last Sunday that it was on the opening date of March 16. Still, scullers (and a few sweep rowers) from Springside Chestnut Hill Academy and Penn Charter bundled up along with everyone else and set out on the Schuylkill.

Springside Chestnut Hill, which did not have any entries in the first Flick race on March 16, enjoyed a successful debut in most areas last weekend.

In the Blue Devils’ lone coxed boat, Lauren McCormack directed the girls’ JV four to a second-place finish in its flight. Emma Lutz (stroke), Lexi Smilow, Allison Day, and Ellery Crandall pulled to the finish in five minutes, 54.44 seconds, the second best time out of 11 boats in the two flights in this category. Only an out-of-state crew from Ocean City High School travelled faster.

Two boats racing in the girls’ JV quad event also fared well. First in the second flight, with the second-best time overall (5:45.34) was the quartet of Karley Kochenour, Comora Love-Mitchell, Melanie Bender, and Courtney McElwee. In the other race, second place went to Alexa Schwartz, Aakanksha Sharma, Samira Baird, and Carly Plotkin, with their time of 6:03.92.

The winner in the second flight of the girls’ varsity double, and second overall in the timing (6:01.83), was the SCH duo of Liz McClafferty and Mariel Soto-Reyes. A Blue Devil boys’ double racing in the lightweight class placed third in its flight, as Zac Cohen and Will Tasman completed the course in 5:21.13.

The boys’ varsity quad found tougher going, racing against a number of crews who compete in the fall as well as in the spring season. Jaime MacEachern, James Meadows, Matt Miller, and Thomas Andrews turned in a time of 4:56.22, which put them seventh out of the 10 total entries competing in two flights.

Penn Charter, which had raced a number of its experienced rowers the previous weekend, saw Ethan Grugan and Jeremy McDavid place second in flight two of the boys’ JV double. They posted a time of 5:29.06, which ranked them fourth out of 10 boats overall.

Third in their flight and sixth in time out of a field of nine was the Quakers’ girls’ varsity double, which clocked in at 6:28.78 courtesy of Hannah Kramer and Isa Djerassi. The boys’ varsity double placed fourth in a single, five-boat flight, with Ethan Ashley and Erich Riedlmeier logging in with a time of 5:20.83.

Coming in third in one of two flights of the girls’ JV double were PC’s Jay Dunmore and Jean Gleason, who came downriver in 6:43.17.

A group of Penn Charter novice rowers started their season in some lightly-populated quad events. The boys’ crew (Stephen Flemming, Derek Magers, Tristan Laurencio, Joey Centeno) was third in a four-boat event, with a time of 6:00.02.

One of the two novice girls’ boats hit the finish in 6:51.33, coming in second in a three-boat battle. The line-up here consisted of Maddie Whitehead, Holly Webb, Christina Vahey, and Sally Stanley. In the same race, another batch of Quakers novices eventually completed the course after catching a crab and coming to a stop alongside Peter’s Island.

Preferring to focus on training and formulating line-ups during their spring break, Germantown Academy and Germantown Friends did not race. The lone exception was GA senior Kate Horvat, who won in a varsity double on March 16 and tried out a varsity single last weekend. The Chestnut Hill native showed promise here, too, placing second in 6:21.86, two seconds behind the winner from Episcopal Academy and 15 seconds ahead of the third-place finisher.

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