The varsity quad from SCH approaches the finish line. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

by Tom Utescher

In the final installment of the Manny Flick/Horvat racing series, the schedule for rowers competing on the Kelly Drive course was once again arranged by gender, and last Sunday the girls were working the afternoon shift. It was in essence, the end of the "regular season" for Philly crews (and many regular out-of-state attendees), a time to see who might be expected to perform well at the City Championships on the first weekend of May.

The ladies from the Springside Chestnut Hill Academy sculling program made a positive impression with first-place results in three events. The Blue Devils ruled the JV races for the small watercraft, starting with Nahla Turner's convincing 25-second win in the single. She produced the best overall time overall, and in the same flight Addy Campbell of Germantown Academy was third with the third best time.

In the double, Hope Lee and Olivia Clark of SCH finished a comfortable first in their own flight, and they topped the time produced by a good Scared Heart tandem in the other section by a second-and-a-half. Later, the Blue Devils' lightweight quad (Bridget Hennessy, Paige Aloise, Larissa Noble, Grace Tasman) was first to the finish line with seven seconds to spare over the runner-up boat from Shipley School.

Germantown Friends achieved some of its best results in some of the early varsity races. Laila Okeson pulled her single to the line ahead of all of her rivals, winning in 6:21.80 while Eliza Brody of SCH took fourth in 6:47.88.

GFS Tigers Katie Maguire and Ellie Cheung took top honors in the varsity double with a four second-margin of victory in the fastest of three flights, while Germantown Academy's Lindsay Naber and Elizabeth Wescott placed second in the next flight with the fifth best time overall. Penn Charter (Bella Hondros, Madeline Whitehead) won the third flight, and was eighth on time.

It was actually the second race of the day for Maguire and Cheung, and they crossed state lines in between these bouts. In the morning they'd been competing in lightweight double over at the Mercer Sprints in New Jersey, where they won their section with the fastest overall time.

In addition to the experienced scullers, the youngest Tigers did well, with second-place outcomes earned by both the novice quad (Kim Hua, Zaynab Sanogo, Taliah Broadus, Megan Hua) and the freshman quad (Amory Park, Vanessa Mirage, Isabel Mehta, Meg Bigelow). The freshman event included a crew that had travelled down from Niskayuna. N.Y., up near Schenectady.

Two Mount St. Joseph boats flanked Holy Spirit (blue boat and uniforms) in the varsity eight race last Sunday. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

A pair of Penn Charter rookies, Gabriella Mancini and Riley McDade, won the first of two flights in the freshman/novice double and came downriver six seconds faster than the first place twosome in the next section. The lightweight double raced by the Quakers' Victoria Watson and Anna Pogrebivsky placed second in their flight, with a fifth-ranked time out of all competitors.

With racing action ramping up as the big regattas in May draw near, some categories at Flick Five attracted so many entries that they were assigned to head races, where boats are released one by one from the starting line at brief intervals and then ranked on time. In one such event, the girls' JV quad, 14 crews entered and the top half-dozen finishers included number four GFS (Sam Pancoe, Andy Regli, Isabel Ortega, Lily Zukin) and number six Penn Charter (Lucy Atler, Sydney Nixon, Zoe Tierno, Maria Perry).

The head races for both boys and girls all took place in the middle of Sunday's schedule, so that's how the day's racing began for Mount St. Joseph Academy. The newcomers in the Magic's novice eight (Katie Davies, Caitlin Lawson, Libby Donahue, Holly Householder, Bern Shields, Molly McKenna, Mae Sweeney, Olympia Ransom, Erin Shea Mirabella) gave the Mount a strong start by finishing second in a field of 17 crews.

A whopping 28 JV fours signed up last Sunday, including two MSJ entries. Mount "A" (Sofia Bernal, Aine Playdon, Kerry Faust, Eva Timoney, Katelynn Clement) sped to second place overall, and Mount "B" JV (Gabby Ford, Maureen McGreevey, Jess Webb, Aileen Mansfield, Laurel Chung) also produced a top-ten result, coming in eighth.

In the JV eight, 14 crews lined up in the starting chute, and when the times came in the Mount boat (Maddie Walsh, Julia Woodrow, Julia Flynn, Katie Hallahan, Claire Broderick, Emily Lubinski, Harriett Blatney, Sam Cordero, Eileen McKenna) emerged on top, eclipsing its closest rival by nine seconds.

After this, regular six-lane racing resumed, and the Mount ninth-graders continued to show that they're starting to hit their stride, having made impressive progress since a somewhat rocky racing debut on the Schuylkill at the beginning of the month.

Last weekend a freshman four was introduced, and this new crew (Chrissy Greatti, Kaitlyn Squadrito, Brigit Ferry, Libby Fecak, Ainsley Morasco) earned second place in its flight while turning in the fourth-best time overall. The freshman eight (Lauren Walsh, Grace Morrow, Meghan Scheffey, Julia Ianieri, Annia Hobe, Nora Broderick, Alex Lerro, Lauren Vesey, Anna Murphy) won its heat easily, and there were two faster times in the second section largely because there was stiffer competition for the top places.

In the lightweight four, a late surge by Absegami took the Garden State group to the line ahead of the Mount (Katie Greed, Shayne McKernan, MaryKate Ciolko, Nora Hogan, Hailey Goodyear), but the Magic finished a respectable second in what proved to be the faster of two flights.

The Easter break had produced some intriguing developments in some of Mount St. Joseph's top boats; most notably there was a two-seat shake-up in the varsity eight. This also affected the make-up of the second eight, which was staffed last Sunday by Izzy Mina, Sam Altomare, Paige Comtois, Olivia Snakard, Celene Mina, Alex Natale, Aydin McPhilemy, Riley Gorman and Michelle Lipovsky.

By three-tenths of a second, Holy Spirit High School from the Jersey shore squeaked out a win over the Mount two-vee.

A little later, Spirit's top crew would battle head-to-head with the members of the newly-tweaked Magic V-8 (Shannon LoStracco, Caroline Timoney, Brynn Pelletier, Grace Comerford, Gabi Natale, Cathryn Antonacio, Lauren Kiefner, Gia Hunt, Katie Edling). In the same race was an MSJ "B" which was actually the school's potent lightweight eight ensemble (Abby Schwenger, Karsen Healy, Emma Veon, Erica Arnold, Emma French, Brooke Gimaro, Molly Whalen, Maddie Curran, Maddie Sandquist).

The Mount varsity had suffered narrow head-to-head losses to Holy Spirit in the two previous Flick regattas, but this time the Magic led coming alongside Peter's Island and then held off a late sprint by the Spartans to win it, 4:57.60 to 4:59.80. Just on the other side of Spirit, the dainty diners in Mount B came in third in 5:04.30, a significantly better time than the 5:13.20 that Merion Mercy had produced to win the actual lightweight eight race earlier in the afternoon.

Even with the Mount V-8's victory over Spirit in the first flight, there was news to be considered from the third of the three varsity races. Montclair (N.J.) High School took this one with the top time of the entire event (4:54.20) and they hadn't been pushed at all by any rival boats, winning by 27 seconds over runner-up Atlantic City High.