Dear all,
It has been a busy week for the club in the aftermath of such a spectacular showing at the Junior Inter-Regional Regatta Trials at Cambois. The club managed to get eight crews out of an 18 total events making us the most successful club at the trials by five boats.
The day started with the singles with Roman Bowery continuing his dominance at j15 level as well as beating all of the boys who were in the j16 singles, but for me one of the performances of the day came from Joe Telford beating five other j14 singles to be selected, and only coming off his floats nine months ago… Caitlin Warren won the wj15 singles in impressive style by a good margin also.
The wj164x- of Leah Teagle, Sophie Carey, Liberty Palmer and Lottie Craven winning by one second and the wj16 2x combination of Ellie Hall and Junior Club Captain Molly Dowson also won by a huge margin in a string field and either could have been also selected in the single but the double on a national scale seems the best option for a medal.
The wj164- of Rosie Bell, Megan Turner, Olivia Forester and Holly Meredith were unlucky not to get through as they also doubled up in the eight with Sunderland. The wj154x lost out only by 0.5 seconds after winning at Durham the week before, this seems a very unlucky result as their course was hindered during the race, they then rallied to qualify in the wj154+.
The j15 boys 4+ of Ethan King, Max Burns, Dan Brown and Matthew Cleugh won the inter regional spot in only their second race beating St Leonard’s School by a comfortable margin. The boys separated into doubles with Matthew and Dan Coleman just missing out to Ethan and a boy from QE and Dan and Max seeing off a QE double also.
Emma Thornton and Amy Telford were also unlucky not to qualify as they raced very well. The boys j16 quad won both the 4 and the 4x in consecutive divisions by a good margin. They will represent the region in the four with Amy Snook coxing. Alex Farley teamed up with Cambois to produce a solid performance in the doubles just missing out on a spot. Sarah Holmes teamed up with some girls from Cambois and Sunderland in the quad and again just missed out as well as her single. Kate Burke also narrowly missed out in her single to Caitlin Warren in an excellent race.
With eight medals at the Inter-regional Championships over the last five years, I and the coaching team are confident that this is the strongest cohort we have had and can bring home more medals.
This weekend is the junior GB Team trials in Boston and the club takes seven athletes to the 5k race in singles on the Saturday and doubles on the Sunday. Roman Bowery, Sam Graham, Ellie Hall, Molly Dowson and Caitlin Warren all take part in the j16 trial to see if they can get a place on the training camp (we had two athletes there last year and the year before).
Joseph Adamson and Eve Larsen both seek an invite to the Spring Assessments in Nottingham and look to consolidate their strong showing at the last trial.
The development of the club facility is now at the next stage. Meetings are taking place over the next few weeks with British Rowing coming next week to seek the other bits of funding that we need to extend over the car park. With the help of the council and an MP, it looks like we will have some positive movement soon.
Despite most of the coaching team being in Boston this weekend, Gordon Clark and Chris Telford will be running Saturday and Craig Dowson and Louise Heckels running Sunday with Chris Telford and Steve Holmes.
Thanks
Steven