©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Mount varsity eight reaches semifinals at Henley
by TOM UTESCHER

For the members of Mount St. Joseph Academy’s varsity eight, the memories from their trip to the Henley Women’s Regatta earlier this month will last a lifetime, although they would’ve preferred their actual participation in the event to have continued just a few hours longer.

On Saturday, June 17, the Magic defeated a premier English crew, Headington School, advancing in the semifinals of the prestigious competition, where all the races are one-on-one contests along a narrow, 1500-meter course on the River Thames.

Early on Sunday afternoon, the Mount lined up against the defending Henley champions, the Oakland Strokes, a highly-regard club crew from California. The race had barely gotten underway when the steering cable broke in the eight-oared shell the Mount had rented in England. While Mount St. Joe floundered for a bit before regaining control, Oakland pulled ahead.

Ultimately, the Magic could not make up the ground they’d lost to the accomplished California crew, which won by about a length-and-a quarter in five minutes and 11 seconds. In the final race later that same afternoon, Oakland won by the same margin over the Mercer Rowing Club, from Mercer County, NJ.

The Mount St. Joe crew arrived in England on Friday, June 9, and hurriedly rigged out an unfamiliar boat to race that weekend in the Reading Amateur Regatta. The Reading event, staged less than ten miles upriver of Henley, is regarded as a tune-up race for the main event, and here the Magic easily defeated an English crew, and lost a close race to Mercer.

The regatta at Henley would be the final outing for Mount seniors Francesca Crozier-Fitzgerald, Mary Grace Maggiano, and Meredith Walsh. The juniors in the varsity eight were Steph Farris, Megan McCusker, Jane Mieczkowski (cox) and Emily Walker, and sophomores Meg Kehan and Hilary O’Shea rounded out the line-up. Also making the trip to England was an MSJ four containing junior Amanda Chain and sophomores Alicia Elliott (cox), Lawren Kieffer, Megan Schluckebier, and Meredith Weber. This second boat was the victim of a tough draw in the Henley bracket, losing in the first round to the eventual runners-up from the Dame Alice Harpur School.

During the regatta at Reading, the Mount eight blew off of its stretchers (folding stands used to hold the boat on land), breaking the steering fin. Later, Mount varsity coach Mike McKenna reckoned that there must have been further damage to the rudder mechanism, because the steering cable would hang up at a certain point during its travel and would be difficult to pull. It was almost certainly this additional strain that caused the failure in the semifinal.

On Saturday, the Magic won by more than three lengths over Headington, one of the best high school crews in England. For the Mount, winners of the Stotesbury Cup Regatta and the U.S. scholastic national championships, the toughest competition at Henley would come from club programs. Several of these crews were essentially all-star teams; Oakland, for instance, drew its line-up from nine different high schools.

In their semifinal, the Magic edged ahead off the starting line, but the steering malfunction occurred almost immediately. Because the cable is a continuous loop, Mieczkowski (the coxswain) was able to work the rudder by tugging on the other end of the line, but all of her steering inputs had to be 180-degrees opposite of normal to achieve the desired effect.

“It was still functional once she adapted,” McKenna said, “but there were 15 or 20 strokes until she got it under control. We were starting to veer into Oakland’s lane and they were clashing oars, and the upshot was that we lost a little over a length before we recovered. It was a shame because otherwise, it was probably the best race the girls had all year as far as moving the boat.”

In most U.S. regattas, races are restarted when there is a major equipment failure at the beginning of a race.

“We asked one of the officials afterwards if there was anything we could’ve done differently,” McKenna said, “but she told us ‘In England, there’s no breakage rule, so you had to finish the race as you were.’ Remarkably, Jane had the presence of mind to realize that, and kept going.”

In the other semifinal, Mercer eliminated the last homegrown entry, Kingston Grammar School (no English crew has won in this category since 2000), but in the finals a few hours later, the New Jersey boat lost to Oakland by the same margin the Mount had in the semifinal.

“The girls were pretty philosophical about what happened to them in their race,” McKenna said of his Mount crew, which ended a long season that had begun with a victory in Boston’s Head of the Charles Regatta in the fall of 2005. “It really didn’t detract from their enjoyment of the trip, and they can look back on a very impressive list of accomplishments this year.”