Rowing 2015

2014-2015 was a season full of success and competition.

We started off the year with big things in mind and plenty of goals to achieve which we all successfully did. The first part of the season started off well, Ashburton is always a good regatta for us to see where we are at and what our season ahead will look like. It was also a good regatta to get to know each other and to get closer as a squad.

Every year the best way for us to get to know each other and become better rowers is the training camp down in Twizel. This year's training camp in my opinion was the best out of all training camps I have been to. One reason for this being the best training camp was team Keith (the Seniors) beating the parents/teachers in the quiz to take the Twizel cup. After a successful training camp we were all ready to go for Canterbury champs. Day one of Canterbury champs we were off to a good start and managed to get into many A and B finals. Unfortunately the last day of Canterbury champs was cancelled due to high winds.

After weeks and weeks of intense training we were ready to go for south islands club champs. We started of the regatta well, by getting a great amount of A and B finals as well as seeing our junior crews just keep improving. After a good dinner of burgers chips and ambrosia and a good night sleep we were ready to go. The second day was a day to remember after winning gold in the Under 17 double (Jakob Mangels and Alex Coulthard), silver in the Under 18 double (Myself and Isaac Robertson) and bronze in the Under 18 single (Isaac Robertson).

The last regatta as a full squad was south islands secondary schools. This regatta in my mind was one of the best because on day one, all of our crews especially the novices showed how far they have come throughout the season. As usual Twizel weather came again and blew the second day of the regatta out with many crews in good position to claim some medals.

Throughout the year all the trainings and regattas come down to one thing, the National Secondary Schools regatta or the “Maadi cup”.

This year Maadi cup was up north at lake Karapiro which was a great place to have Maadi cup because the weather was perfect. Because of these perfect condition and the hours of training and pyramids we did, we managed to get some pretty good results. We got into 3 B finals and 1 A final. In the Under 17 double Jakob and Alex got 3rd in the B final (11th in NZ), the under 18 quad of Jakob, Alex, myself, Isaac and Cox Ben Wright got 6th in B final (14th in NZ), the 18 double of myself and Isaac got 2nd in B final (10th in NZ) and Isaac had an incredible regatta in the under 18 single managing an outstanding 5th place in NZ.

To get results like this involves lots of hard work but not just from the rowers but from the coaches and parents as well and this year the coaching team were the biggest part In this successful season. Thank you to Head Coach Pat McQuinn, old boys and coaches Daniel Ryan, Creighton Dawson and James Beattie and teacher in charge, Mr Lange

By Hugo Moffett