©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

It’s the size of the fight in the “Light”
by TOM UTESCHER

At pre-race weigh-ins they can’t exceed 130 pounds., but in every other sense, Mount St. Joseph Academy’s most successful rowers are anything but “lightweights.”

Winning the gold medal at the Scholastic Rowing Association of America (SRAA) National Regatta two weekends ago, the Magic’s lightweight eight completed its second straight undefeated season. The area oarswomen cleaned up in all of the early local races this spring and just kept on winning: the Mercer Lake Sprints, the New Jersey Championships, the Philadelphia City Championships, the Stotesbury Cup Regatta and finally, the SRAAs.

That’s a lot of gold medallions, doubling the collections of the five veterans in the boat, seniors Marykate Kelly (six seat) and Kelly O’Neill (four), and juniors Mollie Flynn (five), Liz Stanowski (seven), and Jenn Young (stroke). Filling out the line-up for 2006 are three members of last year’s undefeated freshman eight, Meg Farris (bow), Jenna O’Neill (three) and Devon Stewart (coxswain), along with senior Liz Keenan (two), who raced in the JV eight in 2005.

Aside from meeting the weight requirement, what makes for a viable lightweight crew?

“You’re looking for length,” explained Mount St. Joe varsity coach Mike McKenna. “Kids who are tall and who are not going to struggle to keep their weight where it needs to be. You’re also looking for aerobic fitness.”

The Mount’s 2006 boat is not entirely made up of lanky lasses, but together the Magic boasts a formidable power-to-weight ratio, and a lot of technical skill.

“The girls in the boat this year are far stronger than any lightweight crew we’ve had before,” McKenna stated. “The objective measurements all tell us that – the erg [ergometer] testing and so on. They’re very fit and they row very well.”

In the first of this year’s five Manny Flick events, the Sunday competitions on the Schuylkill that make up the “regular season” for area rowers before the major regattas come along, there was no lightweight eight contest on the program. The Mount boat entered the varsity race and came in first, beating everybody including the Magic’s own varsity eight. Although the varsity girls usually get the better of their smaller peers when they square off in practice, the lightweights have proven to be capable and valuable sparring partners for the “bigs.”

Picking on rowers their own size, the light eight members rolled over everyone in the remaining “Flicks,” then went on to win all of the major regattas, including Stotesbury. During the week between “Stotes” and the SRAA’s, a case of strep throat kept Flynn from practicing with the crew, but the Norwood Fontbonne Academy grad rejoined her boat for a final workout in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. on the eve of the national championships.

“This [SRAA] regatta was very challenging for them; the other medalists from Stotesbury were not able to win medals at nationals,” coach McKenna pointed out. “For once, I was more concerned about the lightweights than the varsity, because, A: there was some very strong competition they had not seen, and B: they were worrying about it too much.”

In the qualifying races on Friday, the Magic put up the fastest time in the entire field, at 5:24.50, and the three next-best times all came out of the Mount’s heat. Fox Chapel, from Pittsburgh, was second in 5:31.05, and Notre Dame, from Toledo, Ohio, was third in 5:31.22. Finishing fourth in this group, and thus failing to make the semifinals, was Nardin, a Buffalo, N.Y. crew whose time was actually five seconds better than the fastest figure from the other heats.

“Notre Dame kind of came out of nowhere,” said Stewart, the MSJ coxswain, whose boat battled the Ohio school again in the first of the two semifinal contests.

Finishing in 5:08.69, Mount St. Joe won the race by a three-and-a-half second margin, but that was not immediately apparent to the Magic.

“The angle of the finish line made it hard to tell what happened,” Stewart recalled. “We weren’t even sure if we’d won. I think Notre Dame thought they’d won because they had their hands in the air making the “number one” sign. That race really kept us on our toes, because then we went into the finals kind of angry and ready to go.”

There was a very short turnaround time between races, with barely more than half-an-hour to regroup before re-launching for the finals. Saratoga High School had won the other semifinal in 5:14.50, setting up a grudge match in the championship race. Back in 2004, the Mount lightweight eight had gone through the season without a loss before being beaten by Saratoga at the SRAAs. Last year, the Magic turned the tables, outspeeding the Blue Streaks by 4.3 seconds in the final to claim the gold medal.

This year, as McKenna explained, “Saratoga was the home team, and the entire community was looking to their lightweight eight as their best chance for a championship. When they came down the course in the final, they had two TV crews in boats and three reporters and two photographers.”

The Mount rowers, however, are not easily distracted by such spectacles. Stewart belongs to the school of coxswains who instruct their rowers not to look out of the boat during a race.

“Before we go out I tell them that they’ll see through my eyes, and I’ll tell them everything they need to know,” she said. “They’re very good about that – if there was an earthquake next to our boat, no one would even look out.”

Saratoga moved off the starting line briskly to take the early lead.

“They went off the line pretty high [in terms of strokes-per-minute],” Stewart recounted, “but we expected that, and we knew what we were doing.”

The Mount lights usually make their decisive push about 500 meters into a standard 1500-meter race, but Stewart held them a little longer this time, knowing that once they picked up the pace they’d want to hold it all the way to the finish.

“We knew that when I called our move we would take it and go, and hold nothing back,” she said.

The Magic brought it home in 5:30.60, with about half of a boat-length of open water separating them from runner-up Saratoga (5:35.87). Notre Dame (5:37.18) took the bronze medal, while Winter Park (Fla.) finished fourth (5:40.98), a full 10 seconds behind the winners. Fox Chapel (5:41.62) and Leon, from Tallahassee, Fla. (5:49.70) rounded out the field.

“We really wanted to finish off the season undefeated for the second year in a row,” Stewart related, “and we said to ourselves before the final that we’d put in too much hard work not to reach that goal.”