The eight-rower women’s youth boat from RowAmerica Rye, which won gold last month in Florida at the U.S. Youth Nationals, brought silver back this month from the United Kingdom with a second-place finish at the world-famous Henley Royal Regatta.
“We did not plan to come, until after we became national champions,” said Marko Serafimovski, the club’s girls coach and director of rowing. “I am glad we did.”
He noted that the regatta in Henley-on-Thames, a country town on the river west of London, is structured unlike anything else in competitive rowing.
“It is a knockout system of racing,” he said, “which is pretty tough. If you win your race against another, single boat, you move on to the next round; if you lose, you go home.”
Rye’s varsity girls 8-plus boat (eight rowers plus a coxswain) “made it to the final competing against some of the fastest crews from the U.S. and Great Britain,” he added.
In the team’s opening heat in pursuit of the Prince Philip Challenge Trophy, on the morning of July 4, the RowAmerica Rye boat easily defeated its opponent, Britain’s Lady Eleanor Holles School, by three boat lengths.
The next afternoon, the team had a tougher challenge, racing the British national champions from Hinksey Sculling School in the quarterfinals of the category known at Henley as the Junior Women’s Eight Oars with Coxswain, or “JW8-plus.”
Finishing 30 seconds faster than they had the previous day, the Rye girls advanced to the next pairing by three quarters of a boat length.
The semifinal on the morning of July 6 pitted them against California’s Marin Rowing Association, one of the boats they beat last month in Sarasota, Fla., on the way to their U.S. Championship title.
Their second victory against Marin — by just two-thirds of a boat length — sent them to the Henley final against Britain’s Headington School, a team that to make the final had to come from behind to beat another California boat, from Newport Aquatic Center. (That same Newport boat was runner-up to RowAmerica Rye last month for the U.S. title.)
In the July 7 Henley final, Headington got out to a fast start and never looked back, beating RowAmerica Rye by two boat lengths.
“I am very proud of how our boat has done,” Serafimovski said after the RowAmerica team’s return to Rye. “The circumstances of racing under these conditions, with the crowds, the two-lane course, and with different lanes having their own advantages, makes it very unique and special.
“Getting this far at Henley has elevated [the rowers’] level of maturity, and they can bring what they learned and gained … back home and apply that to the entire team,” the coach added. “Their level of discipline, professionalism, attitude towards racing and their seriousness. It’s just another level now.”