May 31, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

CHA-Springside crews medal at Stotesbury
by TOM UTESCHER

Chestnut Hill Academy rowers in the lightweight double, Pete Miller (left) and Nick Turner pull away from the dock after receiving their bronze medals (the medals are obscured, but you can see the ribbons attached to them).

The Chestnut Hill Academy and Springside School crews each carried some hardware home from the nation’s largest high school regatta, an event that drew more than 5,000 rowers to the Schuylkill race course last Friday and Saturday.

Out of a total of nine boats that the sibling schools entered at the Stotesbury Cup Regatta, four reached the finals, with Springside’s junior quad taking the silver medal, and CHA’s lightweight double winning the bronze.

The JV quad containing (stroke to bow) Carolyn Chisholm, Katherine Roberts, Julia Ryan, and Holly Bailey has been the Lions’ most successful boat this spring, winning the New Jersey State Championships and the Philadelphia City Championships. Last weekend the Springsiders finished second to a familiar rival, Conestoga High School, and one place ahead of an unknown opponent, Ursuline Academy of Dallas, Texas.

While most of the girls in the silver medal quad have been rowing together for some time, junior Pete Miller and senior Nick Turner joined forces in the CHA light double just a month ago, at the end of the Manny Flick racing series.

The first portion of the Friday schedule at Stotesbury consisted of timed head races, in which crews needed to place high enough to qualify for the semifinal round of the regatta. All of CHA’s four boats made it through this trial, as did three of five entries for Springside.

Springside’s junior quad qualified first in its category, eight seconds ahead of number two Conestoga. Placed in different heats for the semifinals, each won easily, but the Lions still had an eight-second advantage in time, winning in 5:21.69 while the Pioneers pulled across in 5:29.99. In the finals, the two would get to race side-by-side.

Springside’s Tija Bross and Kelsey Trueblood qualified with the fifth best time in the junior double, and in the first of the two semifinals, they stepped up and took second by edging out Montclair (N.J.), a team that had qualified faster than the Lion duo.

In the senior quad, Springsiders Nell Sorensen, Sarah Souli, Sarah Patches, and Christine Giovinazzo turned in the sixth-best time in the head races, advancing to compete in the second of two semifinals on Saturday morning. The top three in each race got to advance to the medal round that afternoon, and the Lions seniors punched their ticket by coming in second in their heat.

In CHA’s first race, the junior double, Phil Schweitzer and Sam Bissell recorded the ninth-best time out of the 12 boats which moved on into the semifinal round. They missed out on a spot in the championship race by one place, coming in fourth in the first of the two semi’s held late on Friday.

Don Leatherwood, Henry Meigs, Marty Schardt, and Sam Baker manned a CHA junior quad which ranked sixth in the qualifying races. League rival Haverford, which had the fastest time in the morning, raced in the first semifinal that afternoon along with another Inter-Ac crew, Malvern, while CHA was assigned to the second heat.

The Blue Devils, sitting fourth as the boats cleared the bottom of Peter’s Island, made a move over the last few hundred meters. They were coming up on the inside in lane two, but they ran out of water in their attempt to catch third-place Don Bosco Prep. The locals were just 46- hundredths of a second behind the North Jersey boat, but that meant for them Stotesbury was over.

Meanwhile, Miller and Turner had qualified fourth in their lightweight double. When they arrived back at the boathouse, the Blue Devils’ lightweight four was preparing to launch, but there was no sign of coxswain Walt Wynne. He had called to report that he was stuck in traffic, but since the light four had to start on its way upriver, Miller jumped into the cox compartment to call the race for Will Rhoda, Chris Pittman, Jim Ricci, and Sam Franklin.

There were a lot of entries in this category, 35 to be exact, and instead of 12 boats advancing, 18 crews would move on into three semifinal races. Chestnut Hill made the cut with one place to spare, qualifying 17th.

Miller then returned to Turner and their double, and the Blue Devil duo nailed down a trip to the medal race by finishing second in the first of two semifinal contests.

Wynne made it to the boathouse on Saturday morning to call the semifinal race for the CHA lights, but a fifth-place finish in their semifinal ended their Stotesbury stay.

Four boats were still in running from the CHA/Springside contingent, and at their University Barge Club headquarters, the atmosphere in the upstairs parlor was suffused with pre-race tension. Bross, the stroke of the junior double, was genuinely ill with a stomach bug, while nervousness constrained the appetites of other finalists.

Turning in a good effort under the circumstances, Bross and Trueblood came in fifth in their race. The other double, the CHA light, was up next.

Miller said that going into the regatta, “I thought we had a good shot at making the finals, not necessarily medaling.

“We really needed to go after the start,” he continued, “because that’s where we hadn’t done very well the last couple of races.”

This time, the twosome came off the line smoothly, and maintained the third position among the six finalists much of the way down the course.

“North Allegheny in lane two and Roman [Catholic] in lane six challenged us towards near the finish,” Miller said. “People told us that they were coming on at the end, but we were able to hold them off.”

The two chasers finished fourth and fifth, respectively, while CHA, racing in lane five, captured the bronze in 5:13.01, coming in behind Malvern (5:05.30) and Conestoga (5:10.54).

The girls junior quad final developed into a two-boat race, and this time around Conestoga got the drop on the Lions, winning in 5:28.87 to Springside’s 5:29.93. Bronze medalist Ursuline was over six seconds behind.

The semifinal times in the senior quad category indicated that Springside faced a difficult task in the final, and this proved to be the case as Contestoga easily outsped everyone to win in 5:19.14, while the Lions were timed at 5:40.62 for a fifth-place finish.