In only its third year as a club, four out of eight RowAmericaRye boats qualified for the US Rowing Youth Nationals in Sarasota, Florida, June 12-14.

 

By Melanie Cane

In only its third year as a club, four out of eight RowAmericaRye boats qualified for the US Rowing Youth Nationals in Sarasota, Florida, June 12-14. The four boats were Men’s Youth Pair, Men’s Youth Double, Women’s Youth Pair, and Women’s Youth Quad. The first three boats made the finals.

Rye’s Leon Chambers and Tarrytown native Spencer Sands took silver in the Men’s Youth Double, missing the gold by 0.2 seconds. Chambers and Sands had the lead for the whole race until Brookline edged them out in the last second. Chambers said, “We trained for seven months for this seven-minute race and it was worth it!” This summer, Chambers is in his native Germany trying to qualify for the German National team; Sands is in Spain at a training camp with the Junior U.S. National Team.

Megan and Alex Slabbert, both of whom graduated from Greenwich High School last month, earned 4th place in the Women’s Youth Pair. This was their fourth time competing in Youth Nationals. In August, Megan will represent Great Britain at the Junior World Rowing Championship in Brazil and Alex will represent Great Britain at the International European Regatta in France.  

Rye’s Will Turner, who only started rowing in September, and Sean Hayes of Greenwich took 5th place in the Men’s Youth Pair. Head Coach Marko Serafimovski was amazed at how well they did. “They put hours and hours into the training and proved that anything is possible. There is a bright future for these two boys.” 

While the Women’s Quad did not make the finals, Serafimovski pointed out that they are a young team and the experience they gained by competing at such a high level will positively affect their rowing in seasons to come. 

“All of us at RowAmerica are happy to see the progression that all of our rowers made the last nine months,” said Serafimovski.