©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Pittman, Rhoda medal for CHA, Springside crew
by TOM UTESCHER

Wallis Furman (left) and Katherine Roberts, who formed Springside School's junior double, pull through the river at Stotesbury. (Photo by Lene White)

The Chestnut Hill Academy and Springside School crews toted home a sack full of medals from the Philadelphia City Championships at the beginning of May, but the plunder was not nearly as plentiful for the Blue Devils and Lions at the Stotesbury Cup Regatta last weekend.

CHA 11th graders Will Rhoda and Chris Pittman earned the lone medal out of the group, turning in a time of five minutes, 44.61 seconds in the junior double to take the bronze. North Jersey’s Don Bosco Prep won the gold in 5:41.19 over Malvern Prep (5:44.61), while the Chestnut Hill duo finished ahead of North Allegheny from Western Pennsylvania (5:48.86), Shenendehowa from New York, and Mathews High School, from Virginia.

While other CHA and Springside crews had proven they could hold their own against regional competition, a number of them of them lacked either the experience or the physical size and power to excel against a national-caliber field of rowers.

At the start of the regatta on Friday morning there was good news, for the most part, for the two schools. Of the combined total of ten boats entered by the Blue Devils and the Lions, seven advanced out of the qualifying head races to reach the semifinals.

Springside qualified all of its entries, a junior double, junior four, junior quad and senior quad, while the junior and senior doubles and the senior single from CHA made it through. One of the CHA boats that didn’t make the cut was actually a novice crew, but they had to race as a junior four because the Stotesbury Regatta doesn’t include any novice-class races.

Of the seven crews who continued on, five rowed in semifinal races on Friday afternoon. There were two semifinal heats in the boys junior double, which meant that the top three finishers in each race would advance to the finals. CHA’s Rhoda (stroke) and Pittman, who had recorded the fourth-best time of 22 entries in the qualifying round, made it to the finals with a place to spare, finishing a strong second in their semi with a time of 5:49.21.

Springside’s junior double, actually an upgraded novice crew featuring Wallis Furman and Katherine Roberts, moved through qualifying with the 11th time in a field of 15. In the next round their time (7:22.24) was seventh out of the 12 semifinalists, and their fifth-place finish within their section meant that their Stotesbury ride had come to an end.

The Lions’ junior four, which contained Sarah Stapleton (cox), Emily Winant (stroke), Sarah Patches, Christine Giovinazzo, and Karen Rothschild, logged the eighth-best time in a bumper crop of 63 crews in their category. Three semifinal races were needed to handle this crowd, so only the top two advanced, and the Springsiders fell a little short as they finished third in 6:28.63.

A total of 19 junior quads started out Friday morning, and here the Springside crew of Julia Ryan (stroke), Carolyn Chisholm, Lucy Rice, and Holly Bailey placed sixth with their qualifying time. If they could’ve maintained that position within the field of 12 semifinalists, they would’ve reached the championship race, but they came in fourth in their semifinal, missing out by just one place and nine-tenths of a second.

A similar scenario played out for CHA in the senior double, where the Devils were represented by Tom Samph (stroke) and Ryan Boutcher. Sixth in qualifying, they came in fourth in the semifinal round in the last race on the program for Friday. Their time of 5:48.91 was the seventh-best overall.

On Saturday morning, Springside’s senior quad also found its progress halted in the semifinal round. In the Friday head races, the Lions’ Nell Sorensen (stroke), Holly Cribbins, Hilary Drucker, and Gia Palermo were timed sixth out of the dozen boats which advanced, then they placed sixth in their semifinal heat the next day. Their time of 5:54.34 ranked them tenth out of the entire field. Cribbins is the only member of the crew who is of the stature seen in most boats in this class; and the Springsiders were simply overpowered.

“We went as hard as we could,” Palermo reported. “There were a lot of big, strong girls out there.”

In CHA’s senior single, Pete Jacobelli had qualified 12th (in 6:40 flat) out of a field of 26 on Friday, comfortably making the cut for one of the three six-boat semifinals. Three semi’s in the class meant that only the top two rowers would advance from each heat, and even though he trimmed his time to 6:21.21, Jacobelli came in fifth in his race.

By the time Pittman and Rhoda prepared to launch Chestnut Hill’s junior double for their final race early in the afternoon, they were the last hope for a Stotesbury medal for the CHA/Springside franchise.

“The pressure was on, because nobody else made it to the finals,” Rhoda said.

Pittman related “It was a funny feeling to walk into the boathouse and realize, ‘Wow, it’s all on us.’ “

For most of the spring, Pittman had rowed in the double with a third 11th grader, Walt Wynne, but late last month Wynne was tabbed for coxswain’s duty in a CHA sweep boat. Rhoda, who’d been in a quad earlier in the season, went into the double, but it was a natural move for him since he’d rowed with Pittman through much of the 2005 campaign, finishing fourth at Stotesbury.

“With just one other person in the boat, it’s easy to be on the same page,” Pittman pointed out. “We’ll just automatically make adjustments in the boat that we need to make, and not even have to talk about it.”

This year, their goal was to move up among the medalists, but when they took a gander at the other boats, the size of their competitors was daunting.

“We’re undersized – we’re technically lightweights – and we were racing against some kids who were 6’4”,” Pittman said. “It was pretty much the same last year, though, and we’ve gotten better at handling ourselves against that type of competition.”

Rhoda added, “Chris and I have definitely gotten stronger, but the main thing is that we blend together really well now. I think we have better form than a lot of the bigger guys. Our coach, Steve McGuinn, is just a great sculling coach, and he helped us a lot.”

Their solid technique got the Blue Devils off the starting line quickly, and they led early in the race. They were overtaken by two crews in the middle of the course.

“We wanted a medal, so in the final 500 [meters] we were determined to hold on for third place, and we did,” Rhoda said. “You could say we got it done with a strong start and a strong finish.”