CAMDEN, N.J. - Before the summer racing season began, Vesper Boat Club set a goal to have one of its best seasons ever.
Coming into the 2013 USRowing Cub National Championships on Cooper River in Camden, New Jersey, head coach Scott Wisniewski and his stable of coaches were well on their way to that.
The club had already qualified four crews for the World Rowing Under 23 Championships at trials, and had won the points trophy at the Independence Day Regatta in Philadelphia over the Fourth of July, which is a pretty big deal for a Philadelphia Boat House Row team.
Yesterday, at the conclusion of racing on the Cooper, Vesper won not just the overall points trophy, but both the men’s and women’s points trophy, going three for three.
“It’s amazing,” said Wisniewski. “Our goal going into this summer was to be more successful than we have ever been in the past so we were very excited to do what we did at the under 23 trials and qualify four boats there. And then to win the IDR points trophy and then the points trophy here is just something that is very exciting for us and we hope it can continue.”
Wining all three was something Vesper came close to last year. They won the overall and the women’s titles, but lost out on the men’s trophy to Penn A.C. Rowing Association. Penn A.C. was in the fight again this week, scoring 142 points on the men’s side. But Vesper got 253 points from the women and 145 from the men for the sweep.
Overall, Vesper won 14 titles in addition to 11 silver medals and two bronze and had 36 crews entered in the regatta.
“It’s the coaches,” Wisniewski said. “We’ve had good coaches for the last two years but last year we created a little momentum and we were able to kind of start turning the program around, and that made the recruiting of athletes and the recruiting of coaches a little easier. We were really fortunate again to have a really stellar group of coaches that came in and really organized and did a good job with the athletes that we have.”
Penn A.C. was second in points with five championships, three silver medals and six bronze medals. They were followed by Sagamore Rowing Association, which won five gold, three silver and two bronze.
"I was ecstatic winning,” said Benson Stevens, who was in the Vesper’s women’s intermediate eight. “I won youth nationals with Sarasota at Youth National Championships in June, so it was like that all over again.”
The regatta began on Wednesday morning with time trials the first 14 events. An overwhelming increase in the number of junior crews resulted in a new schedule format and the first ever use of time trials.
Finals for the first 37 races were held on Friday morning, followed by time trials in 13 events. The remaining races were run in a heats, semifinal, finals format. By Sunday morning the 34 remaining events were sorted out and all 71 national championships were decided by noon Sunday.
While Vesper won 14 championships, with 71 events, there were enough medals and championships available for the field of 96 clubs that traveled from across the country to compete.
One of those championships went to Long Island Rowing Club’s men’s Junior A double.
“I couldn’t believe it,” said Tjebbe Ruijgh. “Coming in, we were seeded fifth, and we weren’t expecting to win,” he said.
“We knew we had to pick up our stroke rating to be in this race,” Nick Timmons said. “It’s my first national championship ever and it’s just so exciting. It feels awesome. We have so much motivation now going into future races.”
“I won in the quad on Friday and that was my first national championship,” Ruijgh said. “Rowing with Nick was great and we clicked really well. It’s great motivation and a great feeling to have won. It’s awesome because so many college coaches are here to see that we had a great race. We’re so happy about it.”
Videos of all finals will be available next week at: http://www.usrowing.org/Multimedia.aspx.
For full results, visit: http://www.usrowing.org/Events/ClubNationals/2013ClubNatResults.aspx.
For complete event information, visit: http://www.usrowing.org/Events/ClubNationals.aspx.
For more 2013 Club National Championships news and features, visit http://www.usrowing.org/Events/ClubNationals/2013CNCPressCoverage.aspx.