The novice quad from Germantown Friends (foreground) pulls in front of a rival boat from Germantown Academy. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

by Tom Utescher

Boys events were first on the agenda at the fifth Manny Flick/Horvat regatta last Sunday, as crews from Germantown Academy, Germantown Friends, Penn Charter, and Springside Chestnut Hill Academy engaged in their last races on the Schuylkill before the crew equivalent of the playoff season begins next month.

Most of the races were held in the standard six-lane format in one or more flights, but in a few highly-populated categories, there were head races in which crews compete strictly on time and come down the course one-by-one, instead of racing in parallel formation.

It was in one of these events that GA made one of its most successful showings as Isaac Wilkins, who has been successful in a double this spring, rowed solo this time. In the JV single class he was first out of 15 competitors, and was clocked 12 seconds faster than his closest rival.

In the next head race, Penn Charter's JV double, powered by Matt Kestenbaum and Matt Groshens, earned a third-place ranking in a field of 16 duos.

GA had already received a first-place finish in the regular multi-lane racing during the morning, with the varsity double containing Nick Moeller and Derek Walkush hitting the wire first in their flight and edging out Inter-Ac League rival Malvern Prep by just seven one-hundredths of a second.

This fierce dual helped the pair of Patriots produce the best overall time out of all four flights in this class, while SCH's Mike Wrede and Will Newbold finished in the top half of the field of 18, with the ninth-best time.

Late in the varsity quad race, members of the Springside Chestnut Hill crew look over to check out the competition. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

It was in another doubles category, the lightweight event, that SCH's Damian Betancourt and Elliott Cunningham won their flight. In second and third place, respectively, were Penn Charter (Tristan Laurencio, Mitch Sibson) and Germantown Academy (Pedro Sobral, Decker Wentz). There's still some work to be done for these twosomes, though, since the three fastest times came out of the other flight in the event.

In the varsity single, PC supporters saw a third-place finish in the second flight by Loyola-bound senior Stephen Flemming, who posted the fifth-fastest time overall. James Wright of GFS, who had a lot of success in this event in earlier Flicks, did not race on the Schuylkill on Sunday. He and fellow Tiger Gabe Sher were racing a pair over at the Mercer Sprints in New Jersey.

GFS fans along Kelly Drive did get to see their freshman/novice double with Quentin McNight and Jesse McIlhenny come in second in the initial race in this grouping. The seeding was a little off here, as the top times came out of the second flight.

Boys from all four area sculling squads competed in the two flights of the novice quad. The first section was faster overall, as New Jersey's Haddon Township smoked everybody with a winning time of 5:05.10. In the same race, GFS (Doulin Appleberry, Jack Miller, Avi Kulkarni, Owen Keim)

placed second with the next-best overall time of 5:19.61, while GA (Dylan Robertson, Charlie Shafer, Carmen Sinker, Daniel Krausz) was third with a fourth-best figure of 5:26.67.

The boats were more tightly spaced in the second flight, where Springside Chestnut Hill (Gyre Jaeger, Austin Youngren, Ian McLelland, Eliot Rusk) was fourth in 5:28.88, and Penn Charter (Kelsey Kline, Trevor Harbison, Patrick Cannon, Charlie Markham) was fifth in 6:13.70.