by Tom Utescher

The latest of our recent storms wreaked havoc with scholastic sports schedules in the middle of last week, but the snow had fallen and melted away again by the time that area rowers took to the Schuylkill last Sunday for the second regatta in the Manny Flick/Horvat series.

This time Penn Charter joined Germantown Academy, Germantown Friends, Mount St. Joseph and Springside Chestnut Hill in the festivities. A number of the schools rolled out some of their rookies for the first time, and overall each school had at least one first place finish during the day.

It was a chilly Sunday and often blustery, with conditions sometimes changing from one race to the next. It was slow going at the outset, as boats staffed by inexperienced athletes were blown about as they tried to line up on the starting line.

Charter's official first race was a success, with Taylor Lokoff (stroke) and Julia Veith (bow) winning the girls' freshman/novice double. Next up, GA ninth-graders Andreas Moeller and Alex Walkush, who had actually raced the week before, won the boys' version of the event, with fourth place going to PC's James Tanner and Kees Lynch.

Springside Chestnut Hill sent out eight young ladies in two freshman quads. The vessel containing Eliza Dure, Olivia McHugh, Elizabeth Castellanos and Lenny Lorenz secured second place, with Simone Tate, Mikayla Merin, Charlotte Reitmeyer and Kylie McTamney coming in third.

It was then on to the JV category, and a third-place showing in the girls' single by the Patriots' Lauren Paynton. In the boys' race, Doulin Appleberry was a late entry for GFS, and he came in second.

GA's Addy Campbell and Margaret Horvat won the first flight of the JV double with a time that was a fraction of a second slower than that of Vanessa Mirage and Isabel Ortega of GFS, who won the second section with the top time overall. Another Germantown Academy duo, Aman Gill and Lily Connor, placed fifth in the race won by the GFS Tigers, and one spot ahead of them in fourth were Gabby Mancini and Claudia Lopez-Ona of the Penn Charter Quakers.

Another relatively late change for Germantown Friends had Avi Kulkami stroking a boys' JV double with Owen Keim in the bow seat. This combo clicked, winning the faster of two flights in this class, while GA picked up third in the same race courtesy of Carmen Sinker and Max Donches.

In the other flight, Austin Youngren and Dane Hoffman won for the SCH Blue Devils with a time about three seconds off the pace of the GFS tandem. The runner-up to SCH in that contest was a PC double raced by Will Tanner and Ryan Milkman.

Mount St. Joe's first race of the day ended with a second-place showing for Chrissy Greatti, Grace Morrow, Libby Donahue, Alex Lerro and Nora Broderick in the first flight of the JV four event. Their time was nearly identical to that of the winner of the second flight.

For local crews, the junior varsity portion of the program ended with a single flight of the girls' quad, where GA placed third with ChiChi Boye, Maylin Lindsey, Lilly Richards and Brynne DiDonato.

Penn Charter opened up the lightweight racing with Trevor Harbison and Mitch Sibson's third-place performance in the boys' double.

In the girls' light four, GFS had raced the previous week but now returned with a somewhat different line-up featuring Maya Esberg (cox), Chloe Smith-Frank (stroke), Kim Hua, Isabel Mehta and Sam Pancoe. They came in second in the faster of two flights, while Mount St. Joe (Katie Davies, Caitlin Lawson, Hailey Goodyear, Brigit Ferry, Ainsley Morasco) struggled uncharacteristically in the other section, finishing fourth.

A little later, GFS came in third in the girls' lightweight quad with Ayla Malefakis, Zaynab Sanogo, Meg Bigelow and Megan Hua. The boys' event was won for the second week in a row by one of Springside Chestnut Hill's most effective quartets, Eliot Rusk, Elliott Cunningham, Gyre Jaeger and Ian McClelland.

It was then back to open-weight racing, and in the first section of the boys' varsity single GA saw Derek Walkush hit the line less than half-a-second behind the winner from Holy Spirit High School. There was nothing close about the swifter second flight, as Germantown Friends' James Wright overpowered the field to win by 12 seconds.

A victory went to GA in the girls' varsity double thanks to Elizabeth Wescott and Julia McKernan, and another pair of Patriots, Dylan Robertson and Isaac Wilkins, placed second in the opening race of the boys' double. One spot behind them were Jack Walker and Justin Xin of SCH, which had two entries in this category.

In the second flight, PC Quakers Matt Kestenbaum and Matt Groshens placed fourth, and in fifth was the other Blue Devil boat, manned by Sean Edling and Austin Gedrich.

Most of the action for the Mount St. Joseph crew occurred late in the day, since all four eights the Magic were racing had been entered in the varsity eight category. The regular varsity eight and the second eight appeared in the first flight, and in the second group were the Mount's JV eight and lightweight eight.

The V-8 (Maddie Walsh, Gia Hunt, Katie Edling, Caroline Timoney, Gabi Natale, Cathryn Antonacio, Aydin McPhilemy, Erica Arnold, Brynn Pelletier) put up a time of four minutes, 44.97 seconds to win its section by more than eight seconds over runner-up Moorestown (N.J.) High School. The second eight (Sofia Bernal, Aileen Mansfield, Maddie Curran, Katie Hallahan, Katelynn Clement, Aine Playdon, Julia Flynn, Sam Cordero, Christie Faust) finished sixth.

What happened next will be the subject of banter around the MSJ boathouse during the Easter hiatus. Coming in first and second in the second flight, both the Mount JV (Katie Greed, Julia Woodrow, Lauren Kiefner, Julia Ianieri, Molly McKenna, Emily Lubinski, Eva Timoney, Riley Gorman, Eileen McKenna) and the lightweights (Abby Schwenger, Karsen Healy, Maddie Sandquist, Lauren Vesey, Claire Broderick, Nora Hogan, Harriett Blatney, MaryKate Ciolko, Shayne McKernan) put up faster times than the varsity eight had in the first flight.

The JV cranked across the line in 4:35.66 and the lights came in at 4:39.09, seven seconds ahead of third-place Merion Mercy.

With next weekend off and all the schools out of session for their spring breaks, there will be time for coaches to either restructure or fine tune their line-ups for the resumption of racing in April.