by Jill Maxwell ·
Friday, October 25, 2024
At the Head of the Charles Regatta, Oct. 18 through 20, Bromfield Acton-Boxborough rowers and coxswains competed alongside roughly 12,000 athletes, including 300 Olympians from around the world—100 fresh off the Paris games. The women’s alumnae 4 posted the team’s top finish. The only crew fielded from a high school program in a field of collegiate alumnae boats, they finished fifth, surrounded by the likes of Brown University, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Michigan.
Both BA-B varsity girls boats that entered finished well in the top half of their fields, requalifying their berths for 2025. “Our girls crews have left next year’s team with a wonderful gift,” said Holly Hatton, head varsity girls coach. The girls quad had an especially good race; they started in 37th place but posted the seventh fastest time. The boys 4 did not requalify, though the team can secure entries for 2025 through the regatta’s lottery system.
Stunningly good conditions prevailed for all three days. Spectators on the riverbank hailing from England and California were unprepared for the sunburns they incurred.
Rowers reported that the water was like glass in the basin, the wide place where the race starts near the Boston University boathouse. “It’s never like glass in the basin!” said a genuinely surprised Hatton, longtime competitor herself, though she did not race this year. In all, 29 athletes repped the blue unisuits with white swooshes, plus BA-B alumni competing for their colleges or as solo unaffiliated rowers. Here are a few of their stories.
At 28, Annie Cooper felt like the old lady in the alumnae 4 with Anya Buchovecky (Bromfield ʼ21), Summer Maxwell (A-B ʼ20), Rachel Walker (A-B ʼ23), and coxswain Courtney Rosani (A-B ʼ17). Buchovecky and Walker are training for marathons, and Maxwell won the Head of the Charles Collegiate 8 last year and the NCAA Division III national title in May with her Tufts University squad. “It was 10 years almost to the day since the last time I competed,” Cooper said. “I had to try to build my cardio up, to hop on the rowing machine when I could. In high school, Cooper had raced in an 8 in the legendary regatta three times. “It is a much longer-feeling race when there’s only four of you pulling in the boat,” she said. Coxswain Rosani was “phenomenal,” Cooper said. “It’s such a coxswain-heavy race,” with six bridges and sharp turns. “She’s done the alumnae boat many years consecutively now, it really helped knowing that she was so confident on the course. All I had to do was focus on staying in time and pulling hard to keep up with the girls.”
Just before the last bridge, the crew came upon a boat in the back of the field for the previous event. “My dad was right at Eliot Bridge watching and he was saying he saw Courtney waving and he thought she heard him cheering. But she was flagging for the other boat to yield!” Yield, they did not, and the BA-B alums had to take the turn wide to get past them, which cost several seconds. “Knowing that, oh geez, we’re going to have to take this turn wide and row that many extra meters was kind of a gut punch,” Cooper said. But seeing some of the eighth graders that she coaches and some of the varsity girls from the team cheering along the course made it a little easier. “I think it’s a really nice thing for them to see alumnae competing, knowing it’s always a place they can come back to, no matter what stage of life they’re in. Whether you’re a year out of high school or fast approaching 30, there’s still a spot for you at BA-B.”
The men’s alumni 8 finished near the back of the field. “We had a great group of guys from all different eras,” Hatton said. “That race is so competitive, it’s crazy. You have to submit erg scores to get in those collegiate alumni boats,” she said, referring to how fast an athlete can pull 2,000 meters on a rowing machine. “It’s a great feather in the cap for our program” to have BA-B crew in the race.
Community Rowing, Inc. in Boston pairs typical rowers with athletes who have limited or no use of their arms or legs. For the past few years, CRI coaches have reached out to BA-B coaches to invite athletes to compete in doubles. Nooriya Taherbhoy was one of the BA-B rowers who raised her hand. Having never competed at the Head of the Charles, Taherbhoy found herself in the bow of a boat with Max Lyman of West Roxbury, who rows with his arms and shoulders but not his back and legs. They practiced together twice on a straight, quiet stretch of the Charles on Thursday and Friday before racing on Saturday. Taherbhoy also watched YouTube and TikTok videos and talked to Emily Yang and Will Stoddard, teammates who had raced the same event in years past.
“Putting the boat in the water, I was all nerves,” Taherbhoy said. “As we got into the flow of things I was like, ‘this feels better.’” She quickly discovered that real life is not like TikTok. “In one of the videos, they’re pointing out all the landmarks you’re supposed to have your stern pointed to. But I was so caught up in what was going on around me, it all went over my head.”
This particular pairing was stronger on starboard for some reason, so Taherbhoy said she was constantly calling out for port pressure just to make sure we didn’t go over the buoy lines. In the final 1,000 meters, her feet started slipping out of the straps in the boat. “Amping up the rates for the last stretch of the sprint got a bit rough towards the end, but it was an experience,” she said.
Taherbhoy has rowed with BA-B since the spring of her eighth-grade year. “Even though I may not be the tallest or the fastest, rowing is still something that I value,” Taherbhoy said. “What I get with the teammates and the camaraderie and the resilience—everything that the sport teaches—has helped me grow as a person over the years.”
The Head of the Charles brings the world’s best to BA-B’s backyard, said Atticus Keep. “We never know who is coming and what kind of speed they are bringing with them. And the course likes to keep things up its sleeve.” Coxswain Noah Kim had never raced the course, “but,” Keep said, “every turn was great.” Where they ran into trouble, Keep said, was chemistry. “All the best crews share one thing and that’s spending hours and hours practicing, taking strokes together, learning every person’s quirks, until you are no longer four or five guys in a boat but one animal.” Due to lineup changes and trouble with practice schedules, the crew didn’t get to put in those hours. “We were four fast guys who were working against each other a little with each stroke,” Keep said.
At the halfway point, the crew began to fade, Keep said. “Since we didn’t have that chemistry, we were unable to pull it back from the brink. We finished the race at a slower pace than we were hoping. We were disappointed,” he said. “We were all thinking about things we could have done better down the course. But we have to look forward and be constructive instead of looking backward. It was really amazing to get to row with crews from England and China and Eastern Europe.”
The varsity crews will wrap up their season at the Head of the Fish in Saratoga Springs, New York, on Sunday, Oct. 27. Novice and middle school athletes will compete in the Massachusetts Public Schools Rowing Association’s fall State Championship Regatta on the Merrimack River in Lowell the same day. “We are going to focus on the 8s this weekend,” Hatton said. “We had some good 8s races” at Textile River Regatta on Oct. 6, she said. “I’m looking forward to seeing what we can do in Saratoga.”
Jill Maxwell is a BA-B parent and regular contributor.
Bromfield Acton-Boxborough
- Women’s youth 4x+: Johnny Greenberg, Emma Gregg, Ellie Daly, Will Stoddard, and coxswain Adhiti Venkatesh, seventh place in a field of 54, 19 minutes, 11.005 seconds
- Women’s youth 4+: Braeden Hartley, Beatrice Maxwell, Emily Yang, Emma Lawson, and coxswain Hanna Lem Moustakas, 23rd in a field of 90, 19:41.484
- Men’s youth 4+: Uladzimir Danilovich, Henry Belanger, Atticus Keep, Shankara Rao, and coxswain Noah Kim, 58th in a field of 90, 18:29.965
Alumni
- Men’s club singles: Christopher Clark, unaffiliated, seventh in a field of 38, 18:49.023
- Men’s alumni 8+: Ben Buchovecky, Stefan Scornavacca, Josh Hollenberg, William Pharo, Kyle Veo, Michael Ornek, John Babcock, Matthew Chytil, and coxswain Ben Bluth, BHRA, 43rd in a field of 46, 17:21.116
- Women’s alumnae 8+: coxswain Katie Erdos, Ever Green, 25th in a field of 52, 17:55.635
- Women’s alumnae 4+: Coach Annie Cooper, Rachel Walker, Summer Maxwell, Anya Buchovecky, and coxswain Coach Courtney Rosani, BHRA, fifth in a field of 22, 19:37.030
Para inclusion
- 2x: Izzi Walker, 14th in a field of 21, 23:22.570; Nooriya Taherbhoy, 18th, 26:08.279