The weather in mid-May can be fickle, so participants in last weekend’s 99th annual Stotesbury Cup Regatta had to be pleased with conditions along the Kelly Drive racecourse. A temperate Friday was followed by a warm Saturday, the current was manageable, and the customary head-cross wind on the Schuylkill River was not excessive.

Germantown Academy, Germantown Friends, Mount St. Joseph Academy, Penn Charter, and Springside Chestnut Hill Academy all had at least one boat reach the finals on Saturday afternoon, and almost all brought home at least one medal.

The Mount, with five boats entered in the regatta, came home with gold medals in the freshman eight, junior eight, and second eight, and a silver in the senior eight. The boys in the GFS junior quad brought home gold for the Tigers and the lightweight double won a bronze medal, while the girls earned silver medals in the lightweight double and junior quad.

Bronze medals went to Penn Charter in the girls’ junior quad and to SCH in the girls’ lightweight double.

Every boat entered in the regatta had to race in Friday’s time trials in order to qualify for the semifinal round. Here, boats are started one-by-one at regular intervals and then ranked on time. Depending on the number of entries in a given category, either 12 boats would advance into two semifinal contests, or 18 boats would advance into three semifinal races.

All of the Mount’s five entries moved on from time trials, while 10 of 11 GFS vessels qualified. GA and Penn each entered a total of eight events, and each school had four boats advance out of the time trials.

SCH saw eight of the 10 boats it entered move on from Friday’s trials. In one event, the girls’ lightweight double, there were only 10 entries altogether, so the six fastest duos went directly into Saturday afternoon’s finals. Here, Sylvia Kim and Evalina Heep of GFS placed second, while Charlotte Harris and Taylor-Rae Hall-Callaway of the SCH Blue Devils also made the cut, coming in fifth in the trials.

The rest of the boats advancing out of the time trials raced in semifinal contests on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. When this stage was completed, GFS was left with six finalists, the Mount with four, Penn Charter with two, and GA and SCH with one each.

First up for area schools in the finals was the Mount St. Joseph freshman eight, staffed by Claire Delzingaro (cox), Riley McKenna (stroke), Maeve Benedict, Marlow Short, Bridget Bell, Emma Assaf, Grace Sheehan, Margaret Miller, and Alexa Marques.

With the fastest times in the trials and the semifinals, the Magic rookies earned the prime lane-three assignment for the finals, and they steamed down the course to win the gold medal in six minutes, 4.56 seconds, more than 10 seconds ahead of second-place Jackson Reed High School, from Washington, D.C.

In the girls’ lightweight double, one of the rare events with no semifinals, the rest of the finals field was smoked by the duo from Hockaday School, a preK-12 all-girls school located in Dallas, TX. The Texans won by 26 seconds over silver medalist GFS, while the SCH tandem secured the bronze medal.

There was also a dominant boat in the finals for the boy’s lightweight double, with Ridgewood (N.J.) High School winning gold in 6:11.45 while Malvern Prep followed in 6:23.94 and GFS (Chenyue Peng, Adam Callahan) won the bronze medal in 6:28.44.

In the freshman quad finals, there were fifth-place finishes for both the GFS boys (Adrian Madrid, Michael Johnson-Byrne, Matthew Xu, Jonah Tecco) and girls (Serafine Holt, Lena Swedloff, Emmanuelle Chen, June Furnas).

The next two finals races, though, brought gold medals for Mount St. Joseph and Germantown Friends.

The Magic’s junior eight (Alice Baker - cox, Molly Groark - stroke, Addison Marques, Aubrey Sheehan, Megan Bell, Ava Kristel, Christian Robinson, Reagan Clouser, Zoe Nguyen), the standout in this event in all phases of the regatta, won the finals by a full 14 seconds over runner-up Washington Liberty High School of Arlington, VA.

Likewise, the GFS boys’ junior quad had recorded the fastest times in its class in the trials and the semifinals. In the finals, the Tigers (Quin Yannella, Zeke Hammarhead, Ryan Chi, Aiden Dunleavy) faced Inter-Ac League all-boys schools Haverford School and Malvern Prep. The Tigers powered down lane three to win by eight seconds over the second-place Fords.

The Dallas foursome from Hockaday won the girls’ junior quad, but Germantown Friends captured the silver medal thanks to Ivy Schaenen, Kate Mardeusz, Josie Hong-Goranin and Leela Rajagopalan. The bronze went to Penn Charter’s Sophia Toncich-Mandel, Parker Grimes, Grace Choate, Vivienne Riley.

PC has had Hannah Aldinger and Lilliana DeMartinis together in a double for several years. Now juniors, they ranked fourth in the time trials in the senior double, and then won their semifinal race. The fastest boat all weekend, Niagara Falls High School, won the gold medal, while the Quakers came in fourth in the finals. The second, third, and fourth place boats were separated by a total of less than one-and-a-half seconds at the finish line.

Mount St. Joe’s second eight had been a little faster than Jackson Reed in Friday’s time trials, but when they raced in separate semifinals, the Washington crew had the faster time. In the finals, the Mount’s Catholic Academies colleague, Merion Mercy, led the race some 500 meters in, but would eventually fade to third.

The Magic (Hadley Harris - cox, Alex Kovach - stroke, Summer Caulfield, Addison Ross, Maeve Ruibal, Callie Zapalac, Ainsley Short, Ashlynn Loughlin, Izzy Scott) fought off Jackson Reed to win the gold medal by 2.5 seconds.

The girls’ senior quad race featured Germantown Academy’s lone finalist in the regatta. The Episcopal School of Dallas, TX, won by nine seconds, while Episcopal Academy from the Philadelphia area finished fourth, behind Canada’s Ridley College and Agnes Irwin. Conestoga High School was fifth, and the GA foursome (Sophia Song, Mira Hayes, Devon Geist, Nina Sager) finished sixth.

Looking to complete a sweep of the four big-eights races, the Mount (Kayleigh Costello - cox, Kate Marsden - stroke, Maddie Dudley, Shay Gura, Emily Penza, Ava Smith, Katie Duffy, Ella Kurek, Elyse McGlynn) faced a strong challenge from the eight from Montclair (N.J.) High School, located a little north of Newark.

The Garden State group posted slightly faster times than the Magic in the time trials and in their separate semifinal races. Montclair started strong in the finals and appeared quite determined throughout the race. They’d win the gold medal in 5:29.47, while the Mount had to fight off St. Andrew’s School (Delaware) to win the silver by 0.57 seconds.