Who would have thought? Who would have thought that in such a short space of time, we could achieve so much. 

Rowing Report 2015-16 Season

Who would have thought? Who would have thought that in such a short space of time, we could achieve so much. Achievement in results? Yes, of course. But so much more than that - we have achieved friendship, camaraderie, companionship, a new found love for the sport, and so much more. 

As five fresh faces came into the squad we saw a huge boost in encouragement, spirit and competitiveness. We came into the first two Ashburton regattas firing with the novices winning their first race in the quad and putting in a competitive effort in the 8 alongside the more experienced under 15s, who got great results throughout the season as well. We went into the January training camp with fresh minds and legs. All the boys enjoyed their time down at the camp and were well fed by the parents who kindly volunteered their time. 

Tired with open blisters we went into the regatta with high intentions of winning and placing and that’s exactly what we did. The whole squad had raised the bar for the next regatta and this helped us out a lot. We racked up the most medals at a South Island regatta in 5 years. 

Stand out performances were set by the senior double who got capped for the second time winning the under 19 double for the second successive season. We then had the under 15s step up and be the top performing age group winning a silver in the eight and a bronze in the quad. Not to forget the under 16s who managed to get 2 silver medals in the double and single. We had then set ourselves up for an exciting secondary schools season. Picking more medals up at Canterbury Secondary schools and South Island Secondary Schools, we were happy where we stood coming into the National Secondary regatta, commonly known as Maadi.

Maadi cup report

From the 4th to 10th of April, STC rowers were away participating in the largest secondary schools sporting event in the southern hemisphere, the Maadi cup in Twizel. We took a squad of 22 boys ranging from the under 15 age group to the under 18’s. This is one of the largest squads STC has taken to Maadi cup.

The Maadi cup has over 2200 rowers competing and 52 events are rowed over the 6 days. This meant our rowers were in for a busy schedule throughout the week. Monday saw the majority of the squad race with a mixed bag of results. A lot of the squad were put through the second chance repechages but this most certainly didn’t see them out as this means they get a second chance to make finals. This rolled us into Tuesday where the results were a lot better with most of the squad seeing themselves into a quarter or semi final, with the under 18 quad narrowly missing out on an A final. Impressive rows from our juniors and seniors saw 6 semi finals from the boys. This put 6 crews into the top 16 in the country, which is a huge achievement. With all the semi finals being completed by Thursday night we had unfortunately missed out on A -finals but the boys weren’t out of it as they still had B finals to race on Friday and Saturday.

Stand out performances as follows:

Boys under 16 double: 9th in NZ

Boys under 15 Quad: 11th in NZ

Boys under 15 Double:12th in NZ

Boys under 16 Quad: 12th in NZ

Boys under 18 Quad: 12th in NZ

Boys under 17 Quad: 14th in NZ

Boys under 18 single: 14th in NZ

Boys under 15 Quad (2): 16th in NZ

With results like this we are still looking to build our ever-growing squad even further and see even more success in the sport. With constant addition of boats or different equipment we are setting these young men up for the future and aspire to see Maadi medals in the years to come. If your boy is interested in rowing, please feel free to inquire to Robbie Lange (rlange@stc.school.nz) or get your boy to approach one of the senior rowers of the college and they will be able to inform your boy on the basic details of the sport.

Jakob Mangels

Rowing Co-Captain 2015/16