A light rain fell on the trailer and boat launching area at the base of the Copper River in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Thursday as trucks and buses unloaded kids and equipment for the upcoming Scholastic Rowing Association of American's National Championship.
The rain did nothing to dampen the mood. For the high school crews that came from all across the country, it was their time to shine. The teams were made up of crews comprised of kids from a single school. And unlike the upcoming USRowing Youth National Championships, there were no composite teams on the schedule.
It didn't mean these crews were not some of the fastest youth teams in the country, or that some of them will not be going to Sarasota for Youth Nationals to face crews from both high school and club teams that draw from larger geographic locations, or even that Youth Nationals is an unfair event.
These teams are fast, and good, and all of them had to earn their places on the schedule at individual qualifying events. And, some will be at Youth Nationals next month.
But it did mean that between Thursday, when practice opened on the Cooper, through the heats, semis and finals of Friday and Saturday, teams of every size were on equal footing.
Big schools like Winnetka, Illinois's New Trier High School, and the 12 crews they have entered to race, and small squads like New Jersey's Nutley High School, which brought four crews, and Pennsylvania's Merion Mercy Academy, that brought six, were all in the same mix for medals.
"Coming from a small public high school program, it's always difficult racing against the clubs," said Kevin Smyth, who has coached at Nutley for 27 years. "The advantages that they have because they draw from large areas and do not have high school time constraints, is a disadvantage for us.
"We like rowing at SRAAs because it's selective" Smyth said. "We just came off of Stotesbury, and that's kind of cool in its own way because if you have a boat, it's bring it, let's go race, and we'll see who's the last boat standing. We finished eleventh in a time trial there of 72 boats. And that's amazing. That's a career for some kids to beat sixty boats right off the bat.
"But, now we turn around a week later it's only twenty-four boats, so just to be in that select twenty-four is cool. So, we like it. You don't always get to go to SRAAs. It's special."
By the end of the weekend, two of Nutley's four crews raced in the semifinals. Thirty-six crews in all raced in finals and the championship medals, hats, and plagues were spread across the board for teams big and small.
New Trier won four of the events, and placed second in two. Merion Mercy won the girls' varsity four and placed second in the girls' lightweight eight.
"This is the national championship and schools come from all over the country to compete here and it's what you work for all season," said Merion Mercy athlete Morgan Lamb, who rowed in the winning four.
"There is something different about this regatta, and something special about this course. It's just lights out, every stroke, every race. For us, being a school, it's more difficult because clubs get to pick from different schools. This is a better competition level for us as a high school."
Head coach Mike Brown has been with Merion Mercy for several years and has helped develop the program into a consistently competitive squad with limited resources. This year, Brown's girls have excelled and won at the prestigious Stotesbury Regatta in Philadelphia.
And they now have a national championship gold, a silver in the girl's lightweight eight, and they are heading to Great Britain to race at the Henley Women's Regatta. "We're a small school, we own six boats, we have 400 hundred kids in the school," Brown said. "If we get ten percent of the kids in the school rowing, that's only 40 kids. Club programs, they're great, they're feeders into the colleges and U23 system, and those guys can pull from a wider radius and truly get great athletes. They have great coaches and they can move the boats.
"So, we'll go down to Youth Nationals, which is a phenomenal - everything is wonderful about it," he said. "But winning here and then going down there, it would be an honor to be in the A final.
"That would be unbelievable for our light eight," he said. "And they won Stotesbury. We won Stotesbury, and I'm thinking, hopefully we get an A final, maybe a B final, and that would be great for kids in a program that owns six boats."
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