by Tom Utescher Every year in the middle weekend of May, rowing course on the Schuylkill along Philadelphia's Kelly Drive becomes the place that launched a thousand ships. Last Friday and Saturday the 91st Stotesbury Cup Regatta, the oldest and largest high school event in high school rowing, encompassed almost 5700 athletes in 984 boats. They came from as far away as Tennessee, Florida, and Texas in the U.S., and there was the usual healthy complement from Eastern Canada. Among the masses were the scullers of Germantown Academy, Germantown Friends School, Penn Charter, and Springside Chestnut Hill Academy. Combined, the four schools sent nine boats through the first stages of the regatta and into the finals. The two that emerged with medals were both from GFS; sophomore Katie Maguire (stroke) and junior Ellie Cheung won the silver medal in the girls' lightweight double, and junior James Wright became the bronze medalist in the boys' senior single. On Friday morning and early afternoon, all the crews at Stotesbury started out one-by-one in time trials, as opposed to the side-by-side six-boat races that occurred in the semifinals and finals. In the most heavily populated categories, usually ones with 30 or more participants, the crews with the 18 best times moved into a three-race semifinal stage, in which the boats that placed first and second in each section advanced to the finals. Otherwise, the 12 fastest competitors moved on into two semifinals, and the six spots in the finals went to the three top finishers in each heat. In a few classes with a small number of entries, the six fastest crews in time trials jumped directly to a final on Saturday afternoon. GFS did very well in the initial stage of the regatta, with nine of the 11 boats launched by the Tigers qualifying and advancing. Springside Chestnut Hill saw five of the 11 boats it sent out make the qualifying cut, and out of 10 entries from Germantown Academy and nine from Penn Charter, the Patriots and Quakers each had four crews qualify. Several boats missed the cut-off point by frustratingly slim margins. The SCH senior double with Larissa Noble and Grace Tasman, for example, was one place and one-and-two-tenths seconds away from earning a semifinal spot. Some of the scullers who cleared the qualifying stage had to row a second time on Friday, racing in some of the earlier semifinals on the schedule. In the second of two semifinals in the girls junior double, third place went to SCH's Hope Lee and Olivia Clark, who had been third in the time trials and now would move on into the finals on Saturday. In two semifinal events for boys that followed, local contenders were not as successful and didn't advance. GA's Charlie Shafer and Isaac Wilkins, who had made the cut-off in time trials by 0.22 seconds, competed in the first semifinal for the junior double, but did not complete the race. In the second section, Penn Charter's Matt Kestenbaum and Matt Groshens, who had been seventh in the trials, came in fifth. The first semi for the freshman quads featured ninth graders representing the GFS Tigers (Doulin Appleberry, Jack Miller, Jesse McIlhenny, Owen Keim), and the SCH Blue Devils (Ian McLelland, Austin Youngren, Gyre Jaeger, Eliot Rusk), who had qualified ninth and 12th, respectively. In their semifinal race, the Devils improved their standing, but came in fourth, just a tantalizing 0.08 seconds behind the third-place boat that made the finals. The GFS boat finished sixth in the race. In their lightweight double, the Tigers' Maguire and Cheung were third in qualifying and then moved through to the finals by winning the second of two semifinal contests. In that same race SCH's Paige Aloise and Bridget Hennessy, the 11th qualifiers, saw their run at the regatta end with a sixth-place showing. Similar fates awaited GFS and SCH boats in the boys' competition in the light doubles, and this was actually a reversal of their results in the time trials. The Blue Devil duo (Damian Betancourt, Elliott Cunningham) ranked third in the qualifier, but then left the regatta with a fourth-place outcome in the second semifinal, missing third by less than a second. Gabe Sher and Eric Shen of GFS had been eighth in the qualifying, but then they moved through to the finals with a third-place finish in the first semi despite having a time a little slower than that of SCH in the other race. That wrapped up Friday's action for area scullers, but they were back at it early on Saturday morning with the semifinals of the boys junior quad at 8:30 AM. Germantown Friends was the only local qualifier in this class, coming in eighth in the time trials. The Tigers (Raz Allon, Finn Kassel Osborn, Wiley Corlett, Seve Reitano) got stuck in the semi's, though, coming in fifth in the first section. Next up, the GFS girls fared better in this category. After qualifying in the seventh spot, Sam Pancoe, Andy Regli, Isabel Ortega, and Lily Zukin moved on through the semifinals by placing third in the second of the two races. Both of Germantown Academy's senior doubles had made it through qualifying, with the boys (Nick Moeller, Derek Walkush) ranking fifth and the girls (Lindsay Naber, Elizabeth Wescott) 10th. The lads were second in their semifinal contest and the ladies were third, so both boats would compete for the Patriots in their respective finals. Each of the area sculling schools had a girls senior quad advance out of Friday's time trials. In qualifying order, SCH (Amanda Miller, Emma Lutz, Grace Youngren, Sofia Djerassi) was seventh, then all in a row, 10th through 12th, were GA (Emma Rapp, Julia McKernan, Elizabeth Berlinger, Mikayla Fassler), GFS (Kim Hua, Zaynab Sanogo, Chloe Smith-Frank, Ayla Malefakis), and Penn Charter (Kelsey White, Lucy Alter, Sydney Nixon, Emma Grugan). In the first semifinal, PC left the field after placing sixth. In the next race, the end came for GA (fifth) and GFS (sixth), but the Blue Devils' bunch, all seniors, made it to third place to earn a berth in the finals. In the senior singles categories (boys and girls), there was not only a final round late on Saturday, but also a "petite" final. This was one of the larger events, with 18 boats for each gender qualifying for three semifinals. The top two in each semi made the regular finals and were eligible to win medals, while the third and fourth place scullers in each semifinal were slotted into the petite races held just before each final. For the boys, Wright of GFS won semi number two to earn passage to the medal race, while PC senior Stephen Flemming came in third in the next race to get a spot in the petite final. In the girls' competition, Charter junior Maria Perry was ranked 10th in the time trials and GFS senior Laila Okeson was 14th. Both would wind up in the petite final after the semifinal round, where Okeson placed fourth in the second race and Perry was third in the next section. The field was now set for the Stotesbury finals, which kicked off at 1:00 PM. Somehow, the month of May had gotten lost during the regatta. The unobstructed sun on Friday flamed July-like heat down on the rowers, while Saturday was mainly overcast with temperatures at April levels. Neither set of weather conditions bothered the very strong scullers who had come down from Canada, particularly from the area between Toronto and Niagara Falls. In the junior double finals, the girls from Grimsby Secondary School blew everyone away, winning by 16 seconds. SCH's Lee and Clark finished just off the medal dock, coming in fourth a little over a second behind the bronze medalists from Ridgewood (N.J.) High School. A boat from not quite as far north - Saratoga Springs, N.Y. - took the gold in the girls' freshman quad. Here, Germantown Friends' Isabel Mehta, Vanessa Mirage, Amory Park, and Meg Bigelow had qualified fourth out of 12 entries. They became one of the six crews to advance directly into the finals, where they finished sixth by less than two seconds. Next up was the girls lightweight double final. Cheung and Maguire of GFS had placed second to Baldwin School at the Philadelphia City Championships two weeks earlier, and once again they were not quite able to track down the Bears, who held off a late charge by the Tigers (although the gap between the two was much smaller this time). The two seniors in the Baldwin boat won the gold medal in five minutes, 34.03 seconds and the younger Tigers took the silver in 5:35.81, travelling more than three seconds faster than third-place T.C. Williams High School from Virginia. Right after that, two male Tigers, Sher and Shen, ended up under two seconds away from a medal in the boys lightweight double. They were fourth and Malvern Prep was the bronze medalist, while the gold went to Canada's E.L. Crossley Secondary School. Crossley also won the final in the girls junior quad, topping Philly-area favorite Conestoga High School by more than five seconds. Germantown Friends' Pancoe, Regli, Ortega, and Zukin, who had to battle hard to make it into the finals, placed sixth. Sixth place also went to Germantown Academy in the senior double, where Naber and Wescott did well to get into the final considering the fact that they'd only raced together on and off during the spring, with Naber racing in a single for the City Championships. New Jersey's Ridgewood took the gold here, while in the boys' final in this category the laurels went to an upstate New York tandem, Shenendehowa. GA's twosome, Moeller and Walkush, finished one place away from the awards dock, in fourth. Conestoga, traditionally strong in sculling in this neck of the woods, won the gold medal in the girls senior quad, where there was a sixth-place outcome for Miller, Lutz, Youngren, and Djerassi of Springside Chestnut Hill. One place ahead of the Devils was a foursome from Episcopal School of Dallas, Texas, whose outgoing athletic director will be assuming the same post at SCH starting in July. Flemming, the Penn Charter senior in the single, had earned a berth in the petite final, but he had to bow out of that race. In the final the GFS Tigers' Wright, who won the City Championships and who was quickest on the draw in these parts all spring, came up against some oarslingers from far out of town. Fastest through all stages of the regatta was a member of the U.S. junior program, Clark Dean from Pine View School near Sarasota, Fla. He won the gold medal by more than 11 seconds, while there was a much smaller gap between the silver medalist from Ontario's Eden High School and Wright of GFS. The Tiger junior won the bronze medal over his primary rival from the Delaware Valley, Ethan Subers of Strath Haven High School. The last local scullers on the water were in the petite finals of the girls senior single. An Ontario athlete would win the gold medal, and another one, from A.N. Myer High School, took top honors in the petite. In the two lanes closest to the riverbank, Okeson, from GFS, topped PC's Perry, 6:28.39 to 6:30.16.