Mount eights win SRAA’s for undefeated season

It was a perfect season for the freshman and lightweight eights of Mount St. Joseph Academy, and not just in the figurative sense of the word. Both of these Magic crews finished first in every single event they entered, from the first Manny Flick series race back in mid-March, to the Scholastic Rowing Association of America National Championships that closed out the 2005 season on Memorial Day weekend.

At SRAA Nationals, the lights and the ninth-graders each collected their third gold medal of the spring, having previously won the Philadelphia City Championships and the Stotesbury Regatta. No other crew team in the country, male or female, had two eights capture top honors at the SRAA’s.

Mike McKenna, who coaches the team along with Meg Kennedy, remarked “The thing that surprises me about the lightweights was that their margins [of victory] kept growing as the season went on and the level of competition got higher.”

MSJ freshman coach Jim Glavin said that from the start of the season his charges proved to be hard workers and quick studies, and their overall height didn’t hurt, either.

“Six of the eight girls are 5’9” or taller,” he observed, “and this is still a sport where height gives you some additional leverage.”

The Second Four and Second Eight from the Mount advanced out of the qualifying heats into the semifinals, but they missed a trip to the finals. The Magic also entered a Lightweight Four and a Senior Four, which did not continue past the opening round of qualifiers.

But what of the Mount’s third Stotesbury gold-medal boat, the Varsity Eight? It was a strange weekend for this Magic crew, which consists of cox Sarah Opper and oarswomen (stroke to bow) Megan McCusker, Julie Powers, Francesca Crozier-Fitzgerald, Meredith Walsh, Mary Grace Maggiano, Amanda Chain, Emily Walker, and Margaret Flynn.

In winning the eighth of the nine qualifying heats, the Mounties came down the course faster than any other V-8 would all weekend long, clocking in at 5:07.169. Pondering this achievement, and keeping in mind the Stotesbury win, the Mount’s rivals in the semifinals (the second of three) were inspired to scamper along the lake like critters with their tails on fire. Only the top two in each semi advanced to the finals, and the Magic finished fourth, although their time of 5:17.810 was faster than that of three other boats that moved up out of the first and third semifinal races.

“Our particular semi was loaded, because the seeding wasn’t done as well as it light have been,” said MSJ’s McKenna. “If we’d rowed our best race it wouldn’t have mattered, but we didn’t, and the way things were set up, there was no margin for error.”

Because the SRAA doesn’t include a junior or JV category, several of Mount St. Joe’s JV boats were converted to a “second” eight or four. The Magic actually raced a Second Eight throughout the season, but the only member of that crew to participate at Nationals was coxswain Danielle Ohman. The oarswomen, Cara Crumlish (stroke), Ali Bono, Kara Lederer, Katie Bolger, Erin McGann, Katie Klein, Liz Keenan, and Kristin O’Neill (bow), all came out of the JV Eight. Moving up out of the qualifying round through a second-placing showing in the first of six heats, they came in fifth in a semifinal that included gold medalist Ocean City.

The Second Four, meanwhile, was the most successful of the three MSJ entries in the four-oar racing. Coxed by Whitney Zielinski, the quartet of Patty Murphy, Gabby Jordan, Lauren Byrne and Meg Cardell took third in one of four heats to advance to the semifinals, where they finished sixth in their race.

The Mount’s lightweight eight crew (Jane Mieczkowski [cox], Jenn Young [stroke], Saibh Madden, Christine Laskowski, Mollie Flynn, Steph Farris, Kelly O’Neill, Marykate Kelly, and Liz Stanowski) had mastered their rowing technique fairly early in the season, but for the major regattas, Coach McKenna wanted to raise their intensity level.

“We rowed pretty, but we needed to be more aggressive,” remarked Young, the sophomore stroke.

Saibh Madden, a Penn recruit who occupied the seven seat, elaborated.

”We managed to kick it up in practice. We worked on our aggression right from the starting line, which really helped us jump out early. We also like to [make a] move in the middle 500, and we continued to do that.”

The only other senior in the boat was Christine Laskowski, a team co-captain (with the V-8’s Powers) who has chosen Boston University.

At Mercer Lake, the lightweights started out with an easy win in their initial heat, with their time of 5:12.803 ranking second overall, just behind Saratoga. This helped fire up the current crop of Mounties; although none of them had raced in the Magic light eight at the 2004 Nationals (Madden had been in the boat earlier in the year), they knew that ‘Toga’s victory at the SRAA’s had cost the MSJ lights an undefeated season. The crews went head-to-head in the semifinals, with Mount St. Joe winning in 5:14.759 while the New Yorkers, though almost six seconds behind, came in second and would join the Magic in the final race.

Here, the Mount would also have to contend with a strong crew from Leon High School, located on the Florida panhandle.

“We didn’t change our strategy because of who the competition was,” Madden noted. “We just had to row our race, stick to our usual plan.”

The plan produced its usual results, with the Mount winning comfortably in 5:17.688, while the silver medal went to Saratoga (5:22.035) and the bronze to the Tallahassee lassies (5:26.346).

The Magic’s other golden eight, the freshman boat, contained cox Devon Stewart, Lawren Kieffer (stroke), Meredith Weber, Meg Kehan, Hilary O’Shea, Meg Farris, Megan Schluckebier, Colleen McNamara, and Jenna O’Neill.

In the opening heats, the Mount rookies rocketed down the course in 5:08.374, which held up as the second-fastest time produced by a girls eight in any category, in any round. Saratoga ranked second, seven-and-a-half seconds back, and no one else made it under 5:20.

Saratoga, at least, regained some confidence in the semifinal stage, taking the first of the three races in 5:25.613, slightly faster than the Mount’s winning time of 5:25.846 in the third semi. When the final race was over, however, the New York crew found themselves behind the Mount freshmen once more, this time by almost six seconds.

The stroke for the Magic, Lawren Kieffer, recalled that just before the contest began “I was thinking that I probably should be nervous, but I wasn’t. We were all sitting on the starting line singing.”

Kieffer, who dyed her hair Mount St. Joe Purple for the regatta, represented the third generation in her family to win a national scholastic title. The crew’s coxswain, Devon Stewart, reported that the race was close until the middle 500 meters, when the Mounties unleashed a series of power strokes they’d planned to perform.

“After that,” Stewart said, “we knew that if we kept pulling through in that final 500 we were going to be the Mount’s first undefeated freshman eight ever. In the last few strokes I said to them ‘Come on, you guys, do you want to be a legend?’ “

The locals won in 5:20.957, Saratoga was runner-up in 5:26.734, and Mainland High School (Atlantic City, NJ) was another two seconds back in third.

“They just love to pull,” Coach Glavin said of his ninth-grade gold medalists. “They’re very competitive, and we had a coxswain who is just a natural. It was very easy to teach this group how to row, and it didn’t take long before they had a real sense of what it takes to move a boat.”