Girls first varsity eight crew show their gold medals after winning their event at the state finals. Front row from left: KC Faulkner, Jocelyn Harte, cox Ellie Kendall, Katya Lierhaus, and Tola Myczkowska. Top row from left: Allie Bollman, Kate Lee, Olivia MacLean, and Caroline Hart. (Courtesy photos)
Girls novice four, from left: Julia Leblanc, Hannah Malloy, Courtney Lunger, and Katherine O’Shea (missing cox Allie Cronin), proud winners of bronze medals at the state finals.
For a small team, the Bromfield Rowing girls certainly scored big.
The girls team, novice and varsity rowers, pulled their boats to medal-winning finishes Sunday at the Massachusetts Public School Rowing State Championship Regatta in Lowell, which drew teams from 19 high school rowing programs.
“I am extremely proud of what the girls team was able to accomplish this spring,” said girls coach Holly Hatton. “Every girl who raced on Sunday won a medal, placing second in the Girls Team Trophy and helping secure a second place Overall Team finish.”
Freshmen Caroline Hart and Olivia MacLean put the other teams on notice early in the morning with their strong first-place finish in the girls double.
The girls first varsity eight boat ended the day in the same fashion. Cox Ellie Kendall, juniors Kate Lee, Allie Bollman, Jocelyn Harte, and Katja Lierhaus, Acton-Boxborough (A-B) sophomore KC Faulkner, and freshmen Maclean, Hart, and Tola Myczkowska covered the 1,500-meter course in gold-medal winning time, edging out top-ranked Wayland-Weston in the premier girls event of the regatta.
In the between hours, the girls second varsity eight—juniors Erica Marksteiner, Elizabeth Swain, and Fiona Wissell (A-B), sophomores Hannah Early (A-B), Mary Egan, KC Faulkner (A-B), MacKenzie Grant, Paulina Sarnik, and Jillian Saydah, and freshman cox Polly Lauer—came in second to Wayland-Weston, as did the girls novice eight, powered by A-B juniors Charlotte Doherty and cox Elizabeth Edwards, sophomores Emily Sager (A-B), freshman Elizabeth Wilkey, eighth-graders Emily Mitchell, Sabine Netcshke, Colleen O’Shea, and Sylvia Sarnik, and seventh grader Molly Hart. The girls novice four crew—A-B sophomore Courtney Lunger, seventh-graders Hannah Malloy and cox Allie Cronin, and sixth-graders Julia Leblanc and Katherine O’Shea—finished third in their event.
Boys first varsity four, from left: Sam Ginouves, Conor Finnegan, Diana Fox (cox), Mike Child, Kendall Cotton, and coach Pat Scott. (Courtesy photo)
The boys also put in strong performances. Seniors Mike Child and Conor Finnegan rowed to second place in their double event. The boys first varsity eight—Child, Finnegan, juniors Ian Christie, Kendall Cotton, and cox Dinana Fox, and sophomores Scott Blackwell, Matt Chambers, Sam Ginouves, and Pat Ware—finished third after Wayland-Weston and Hingham. The second varsity eight, with senior Brendan Revane, A-B junior Alex Lee, sophomores Erik Johnson, Taylor Leblanc, Matt Robinson, Sean LeRoy, Sebastian Smalanskas, and Ben Wilmot, and seventh-grade cox Emma Keeney-Pessia, just missed a medal with a fourth-place finish.
The Wayland-Weston program, which has dominated the state championship regatta for the past four years, once again took home the Girls, Boys, and Overall Team Trophies. But this year Bromfield didn’t make it easy for them.
Bromfield Rowing will compete nationally this year for the first time. The boys varsity four—Child, Cotton, Finnegan, Fox, and Ginouves—earlier qualified for the Junior National Championships in Cincinnati and the Scholastic Nationals in Saratoga, where they’ll be joined by Hart and MacLean in the girls double.
“A trip to the National Championship has been our goal for three years now,” said boys coach Pat Scott. “For us to be sending five rowers from such a small pool of potential athletes is amazing. I’m so proud of the success of the entire boys program. They’ve all developed such a bond, and I think that’s a very important ingredient in our success.”
Girls coach Holly Hatton summed it all up: “Pretty darn good for a small program!”
