Germantown Friends junior James Wright struggles to stay ahead of a New York rival (bow number three visible) during his gold medal performance at the Scholastic Nationals. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

by Tom Utescher

Crews from Germantown Academy, Germantown Friends, Mount St. Joseph, and Springside Chestnut Hill crossed the Delaware River to the outskirts of Camden, N.J. last weekend to race at the annual Scholastic Rowing Association of America Regatta on the Cooper River race course.

Three medals, two gold and one silver, made the trip back across the Ben Franklin Bridge. In the boys' senior single, Germantown Friends junior James Wright won an incredibly close final, taking the gold medal by eight one-thousandths of a second over an upstate New York rival.

The margin of victory was larger for the Mount's junior varsity eight, as Abby Schwenger, Julia Woodrow, Julia Flynn, Katie Hallahan, Lauren Kiefner, Emily Lubinski, Claire Broderick, Sam Cordero and Eileen McKenna prevailed by more than three seconds over runner-up New Trier High School, a Midwest power from the Chicago suburbs. Only Cordero, Flynn, and Hallahan and Schwenger are juniors, while the other five are 10th-graders.

More Mount jayvees medaled in a four, with the silver medal going to juniors Katelynn Clement (bow) and Kerry Faust (stroke) and sophomores Sofia Bernal (cox), Aine Playdon (three), and Eva Timoney (two).

Overall, the Mount had four of the eight boats it took to the SRAA's reach the finals, and Germantown Friends saw three of its six entries gain the final round on Saturday afternoon.

In order to race at the scholastic nationals there was a qualifying standard to be met, and most boats from area schools made it in based on their performances at the Philadelphia City Championships on the first weekend of May.

Unlike the Citys and the Stotesbury Cup Regatta there are no time trials at SRAA's; everyone starts out in heat races.

In some small categories, there was simply a first round of racing and then a final, and for most others there was a semifinal stage between those two rounds. In the major categories, there were repechage races (similar to a feed-in bracket in other sports) in between the opening round and the semi's.

Penn Charter did not have any boats appear at the Scholastic Nationals, while the lone entry from SCH, a boys' freshman quad, was unable to move on from the opening round. The one boat in the mix from Germantown Academy, a boys varsity double containing senior Nick Moeller and sophomore Derek Walkush, finished third in the first of three heats in the initial round.

As one of the top four crews in their heat, the GA twosome joined the field of 12 semifinalists. Their run ended with a fourth-place outcome in the second of the two semi's; they missed the cut for the six-boat final by one place and a little over a second-and-a-half.

There were a number of boats that finished fourth in the opening heat races in their categories and missed the chance to advance by one or two places. These were the freshman quad, lightweight quad and varsity single rowed by the girls of GFS, and Mount St. Joe's freshman eight and varsity four.

The lightweight four and the second varsity eight raced by the Magic each made it past the first stage of the regatta, but not the semifinal round. In the light four (Katie Greed, Shayne McKernan, Marykate Ciolko, Nora Hogan, Hailey Goodyear), were third in one of four heats at the outset, then in the first of the two semifinal contests they finished fifth. In one of three opening heats in the second eight, the Mounties (Izzy Mina, Sam Altomare, Michelle Lipovsky, Olivia Snakard, Harriett Blatney, Aydin McPhilemy, Celene Mina, Riley Gorman, Paige Comtois) made the cut with a fourth-place performance, and they left the regatta with a fifth-place showing in one of the two semifinals.

One of the first boats to race on Friday morning was the girls' lightweight double, and Katie Maguire and Ellie Cheung of GFS won the second of two heats in this event, advancing directly into the finals in their class.

In the heats, three boats in the other section had been faster, and those three came in ahead of the Tigers tandem in the finals. Baldwin School, the City and Stotesbury winner, took the gold medal by three seconds, while GFS was fourth, around three seconds behind bronze medalist Xavier Prep of Phoenix, Ariz.

The Mount JV four was up next in the finals. After winning one of the four opening-round heats, the Magic moved on through the semifinals by coming in second in the first of the two races. Lower Merion High School, winner of the City Championships and Stotesbury, collected the gold medal here too, winning in five minutes, 36.063 seconds.

Next came silver medalist Mount St. Joe (5:39.477), ahead of bronze medalist GPS (Girls Preparatory School), of Chattanooga, Tenn. (5:41.677).

Strong all season, the Magic's JV eight had won the City Championships convincingly, but then was edged out at Stotesbury by Saratoga Springs High School. Saratoga entered their JV eight but no varsity eight at Stotes, while at SRAA's it was the other way around.

Winning one of the four heats with the second-best time overall, the Mounties then put up the fastest time in the semifinals to win the second section. Asserting themselves about midway through the final, the Magic pulled ahead of New Trier and the MSJ stern cleared the bowball of the Illinois boat with around 400 meters to go.

Mount St. Joe's gold medal JV eight is on its way to an open-water lead over Illinois' New Trier High School (bow number five at right) during Saturday's final. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

The Mount jayvees didn't let up, winning in 5:04.844 while New Trier took silver in 5:08.060 and Upper Arlington High School of Columbus, Ohio won the bronze medal in 5:11.244.

One of the boats in a category that went straight from the heats to the finals was the MSJ lightweight eight (Maddie Walsh, Karsen Healy, Emma Veon, Brooke Gimaro, Molly Whalen, Erica Arnold, Emma French, Maddie Curran, Maddie Sandquist), which won one of the three initial races.

There had been three boats with faster times in the other heats, though, and they would also prove quicker than the Magic in the final, which was won by New Trier in 4:57.786. Merion Mercy was the silver medalist in 5:00.366, and was followed by Long Island's Manhasset High School (5:03.742) and the Mount (5:07.529). The other two finalists were way behind; Radnor High was fifth in 5:30.849.

After this, GFS had two of its boys' boats go for a medal, including one in the straight-to-finals lightweight quad class. Here, the Tigers' Gabe Sher, Finn Kassel Osborn, Wiley Corlett and Seve Reitano placed third in one of the two heats early in the regatta.

Unfortunately, their time - sixth out of the qualifiers, proved an accurate indicator of their finish in the final, where even a strong Philly-area sculling program, Conestoga High School, would come away without a medal. Brophy Prep from Tempe, Ariz. captured the gold medal, three-and-a-half seconds ahead of runner-up Saratoga.

Germantown's Wright, a force in the single all season on the Schuylkill and the City Championships gold medalist, had won the bronze at Stotesbury behind opponents from Florida and Canada a week before SRAA's. Those opponents weren't present last weekend, but there was a new out-of-state rival, fellow junior Emory Sammons of Fort Plain High School, located northwest of Schenectady, N.Y.

The GFS junior felt he could've caught the eventual silver medalist at Stotesbury if he hadn't let him get too far ahead early in the race.

At SRAA's he said, "I wanted to have a faster start, but still have a little bit left to make a move in the middle of the race and try and break through people."

Sammons won the slowest of the three heats on Friday, while Wright was a bit faster in winning the second section and the top time belonged to John Karen from Long Island's St. Anthony's High School. All three moved on through the semifinals, Wright owning the best time at this stage as he won the second semi.

Karen, yet another 11th-grader, was the early leader in the final race. Rowing in the middle of the course in lane four, Wright moved ahead and - with a lot of effort - appeared to be holding his rivals at bay more than two thirds of the way down the course.

"I made my move around 700," Wright said, relating how he separated from Karen and then tried to shake Sammons. "I got up pretty much bow-to-stern, and I thought I might have broken him."

But as the finishing line approached, Sammons, positioned just inside Wright in lane three, was closing quickly.

"His sprint was really incredible," Wright said. "When he started moving back I really didn't have much left in the tank."

After the race, he didn't learn for a while that he'd won. While he was still around the finish line area the results hadn't been released from the timing tower, and it was impossible to tell with the naked eye (the times were 5:26.729 to 5:26.737).

"Honestly, I thought that I lost, which was really disconcerting," he recalled. "I saw him even with me, and I thought he squeaked it out."

Wright began to row farther down the river toward the dock.

"I had to do it 'arms only' because I couldn't feel my legs," he explained. "I saw our coach, Aaron, on the bank and he was yelling 'You won!' So at that point, it was awesome."

In the six heats of the girls varsity eight, each of the winners went right into the semifinals, while the boats that were second and third in each group were sent into the two repechage races to try and earn their passage to the semi's. Mount St. Joseph (Shannon LoStracco, Caroline Timoney, Katie Edling, Grace Comerford, Alex Natale, Gia Hunt, Brynn Pelletier, Cathryn Antonacio, Gabi Natale) came in second in the last of the heats, putting up the ninth-best time overall.

The Magic, a young boat with six rowers who are juniors and sophomores, won their "rep" and then were second in their semifinal race, securing a berth in the finals.

At Stotesbury, Mount St. Joe had taken the bronze medal behind two schools from the Washington, D.C. area, National Cathedral Prep and Walt Whitman High School. The three boats would finish in the same order at SRAA's, but with tougher competition, this time they wound up in fourth through sixth place.

Saratoga gave a convincing gold medal performance to win in 4:51.472 over Winter Park (Fla.) High School (4:55.522), with the bronze medal going to Loyola Academy from just outside Chicago (4:57.116). National Cathedral was timed in 4:58.732, Whitman in 5:01.806, and the Mount in 5:05.139.