Hi Everyone! I hope you are enjoying this glorious weather! I wanted to give an update on how our juniors did this past spring as well as where we are going this summer.
First off, big shout out to Kevin Bedell, Rick Trimble, Matt Madigan and Joe Federici for helping me this spring with our very talented youth athletes. It took a villiage between am and pm practices, travel to Rivanna, Mercer and Sarasota. Also special thanks to the PRSF for allowing our young athletes to train in the Mariposa and one of the Empacher 1x's and the BOG and Race Committee for their support and encouragement.
We had six junior athletes train with use this spring (as well as two u23's on gap year). Those athlete are Tony Madigan, Ella Dowley, Colin Rizley, Webb Whitfield, Daniel Riley, and Tarek Kalifa.
US Rowing has changed their rule that athletes must declare their youth national qualifying regatta early in the spring. Ella and Tony choose the Virginia Scholastic State Championship (only first place qualifies for youth nationals) while the rest of the boys particpated in the mid atlantic regional qualifier (top 4 qualify).
Tony and Ella both won the varsity 1x at Virginia States; qualifying them both for Scholastic Nationals (SRAA) and Youth Nationals (YN), In between qualifying regatta's, Tony finished 2nd (behind a Canadian) at Stotesbury. The following week Ella finishd 5th in the A final at SRAA and Tony WON SRAA's.
Meanwhile, Colin, Webb (A double) and Tarek and Daniel (B) double headed to Mercer to the MidAtlantic Regional Qualifier.. The boys raced 2xs as well as a 4x. In the 2x time trials the boys finished 1st (A double and 5th (B) double out of 23 boats. The PBC boats ended up in the same semifinal and finished 1, 2 with Ridgewood rounding out the top 3 moving to the A final. In the A final, Colin and Webb easily WON by over 5 seconds and the B double finished 5th, one spot out of qualifying (and about a sec out) for Youth Natioanals.
Ella choose not to race at Youth Nationals due to graduation, but Tony, Colin and Webb raced at Youth Nationals. Youth Nationals is held in Sarasota and features the top boats from around the country - with powerhouses such as Marin, Los Gatos, Miami Beach, Row America rye, Whitemarsh and so many others.
In the time trials, Tony finished 7th out of 30 and Colin and Webb finished 6th out of 25. The top 16 move on to A/B semi's and the rest to the C or D final -talk about racing - the semi's were incredibly close! Tony fniished 3rd in his semi - moving him onto the A final (a 10 sec time spread between the 8 A final boats in the 1x). Colin and Webb finished 4th in their semi, also sending them to the A. There was a 4 second spread between all 8 boats going to the A final.
In the finals - Tony had a fantastic race and finished 5th out of 8, only 3 seconds out of bronze - amazingly, Tony has two more years to race the varsity 1x. He is going to US Rowing Junior National Team Trials July 5 - 7th - so keep an eye on Tony!
Colin and Webb had the race of their youth careers! The top two seeded boats (winners from the semi's and TT) finished 7th and 8th. The event was won by the Concord boys in a time of 6:53. Second place was 6:55.4, 3rd 6:55.8, 4th (PBC boys) 6:56.8, 5th was 6:57.6 - just amazing racing!
Take away - two boats, two A finals, truly 4th and 5th in the country.
Colin is heading off to the Naval Academy for Plebe summer and Webb will join our summer program before he heads off to Christendom in the fall.
Speaking of Summer Program - (M - Sat)
The U23's practice from 6 to 8 am (about 10 athletes)
The youths practice from 8:30 to 10:30 am (about 32 athletes) and
a combination of U23's and Juniors practice from 5:30 to 7:30pm M - Th.
Thanks so much for all the encouragement and support from PBC for these athletes.
Carol, Joe, Kevin and Matt