While many of the country's top junior crews raced for the Youth National Championship in Sarasota FL this weekend, arguably the two fastest boys scholastic eights in the country opted to head to the National Schools Championship in Philadelphia to face off for $6000 in prize money for their upcoming trips to the Henley Royal Regatta.
Coming into the race, both the Montclair and Kent School boys varsity eights were at the tailend of undefeated seasons, with Montclair earning Stotesbury and SRAA wins, and Kent having won the NEIRA championships.
In the end it was Montclair who was able to put a feather in their unbeaten streak with a one-length win over Kent, followed by St. Joseph's Prep for bronze. Montclair opted for the NSC event for a few different reasons, the foremost of which was to try to earn the distinction as the top scholastic crew in the country.
"We really wanted to race Kent," Montclair coach Jeremy Michalitsianos said. "We were the only unbeaten schools in the country, and we all knew the premise of the regatta is to race the winner of Stotes or SRAAs against the winner of the NEIRA regatta to see who is quickest.
"We all just wanted to race to see who would win, and, and I'm glad we all came together to do it," he said. "The Kent guys are really good guys, and they sent us a nice tweet afterward, and all the crews were great as well, we really enjoyed racing them."
Michalitsianos said the prize money was a great bonus, but was not really at the core of the crews' goal.
"We talked about trying to remain unbeaten rather than about the money," he said. "We have a young crew, with six returning next year, so we didn't have it in our mind at the beginning of the season, but as the season wore on it became an attractive race for us to see if we could remain undefeated.
"The prize is really welcome as well to help fund our trip, because as a public school, we get good funding during the season, but for any post-season races after May, we have to pay our own way," he noted. The funding equation also played into the decision whether to go to Youth Nationals, as the students and their families would have to fund the trip. In addition to their Henley trip, he felt it was a "race too far for us."
"When we go to any sleepaway, the kids pay on top of everything else, so we didn't go to state championships when they went to two days. With Youth Nationals, it would have been fun to see what we could have done and I think we would have been in the hunt, but it would have been just too much for us to do everything."
Michalitsianos, who is English, sees Henley as worth the effort. Montclair has taken a couple crews in the past, and Michalitsianos has found the trip can be an important part of developing young rowers.
"Henley is an amazing, enriching experience for high school kids, so I felt if we had the chance we would take them," he said of the decision to go this year, which they made after Stotesbury. "I still see a lot of those boys, and they still talk about it," he said of past groups, which included Justin Murphy and Nate Goodman.
"We don't know how we'll get on, but we'll see how far we can get, maybe take some scalps along the way, and enjoy the ride."
Kent is also planning to go to Henley, but the two crews will likely not face one another again, as Montclair would race in the Princess Elizabeth Cup, and Kent potentially in the Temple, as there are some post-grad athletes in the Kent crew.
The regatta is run by the National Schools Rowing Association (NSRA), a consortium of scholastic rowing associations that arose from a gathering of folks who run scholastic races in Philadelphia, Saratoga NY, Occoquan VA, New England, Florida, the Midwest, and other locations.
"We met to discuss our common interests, and found that we really liked getting together," NSRA President Leslie Pfeil said of the group's decision to created the NSRA. "About a year after we created the organization, we decided to run a race for teams that could not go to or did not qualify for Youth Nationals."
The Youth Nationals include "youth" or "club" teams that are not restricted to students from one high school, which can give students who do not have rowing teams at their specific high schools a way to get into the sport. Some youth club programs can attract students from several different high schools – thus the distinction of strictly "scholastic" programs that include students only from their specific school.
The event was held in Saratoga in 2014, Occoquan in 2015, and in Philadelphia the past two years. As a coffer of funds slowly grew, the idea of creating a Henley prize arose, and with the help of a few small-ish donations, finally this year there were funds to make it happen.
Competing as it does with the Youth Nationals as well as many high school graduations –some teams that decide not to attend Youth Nationals do so in large part because of graduation conflicts - attendance at the regatta fluctuates, but the prize brought out enough boys eights to run heats.
Update June 13: When it was all done, the original $5000 prize was increased to $6000, and was split evenly between Montclair and Kent at $3000 each. The Henley prize was originally intended to benefit a crew that would enter the Princess Elizabeth Cup, but with Kent favored to place at least in the top two, the regatta organizers wanted to make sure the prize benefitted a team that was going to enter the Princess Elizabeth Cup, which Kent could not do due to post-grad rowers in the crew. Ahead of the race, an arrangement was proposed that if Kent came in first or second, the money would be split with the other team, with all entered crews being eligible. "Both Kent and Montclair graciously agreed to this," Pfeil said.
Comments | Log in to comment |
There are no Comments yet
|