May 22, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Springside silver, CHA bronze at Stotesbury
by TOM UTESCHER

Springside’s junior quad crew of (left to right) Kelsey Trueblood, Katherine Roberts, Jenn Arcidiacono and Katie Fitzkee added a Stotesbury silver medal to the gold medal they won at the New Jersey State Championships and the silver they won at the Philadelphia City Championships earlier this season. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

Springside rowers brought a silver medal home from last weekend’s Stotesbury Cup Regatta, and you couldn’t fault one of Chestnut Hill Academy’s crews for feeling that the medal they won should’ve been struck from silver, too. A strong second place not far from the finish line, the Blue Devil Junior quad became involved in a collision with another boat and wound up in third to take the bronze.

The successful junior quad from Springside, which had won the gold medal at the Jersey championships and had taken silver at the Philadelphia City Championships, added a Stotesbury silver to its collection. The Lions’ quartet of Jenn Arcidiacono (stroke), Katherine Roberts, Katie Fitzkee, and Kelsey Trueblood posted the second-fastest time in the qualifying head races, won their semifinal heat, and then came in second in the finals behind local rival Conestoga and ahead of boats from Virginia and Maryland.

The junior quad has also been CHA’s most successful boat this season, with the Blue Devils settling on a line-up of Don Leatherwood (stroke), Marty Schardt, Sam Baker, and Jack Anthony in time to capture silver at City’s. With a slightly different roster, the boat had also finished second in New Jersey.

A powerful Haverford School quad burst onto the scene in time to win the City Champs and it would win last weekend, too, with CHA positioned to take the Stotesbury silver medal as the crews entered the last few hundred meters of the race. Then, the Chestnut Hill craft and the adjacent boat from North Allegheny (from western PA) converged and entangled their oars in two of the outside lanes. By the time the Devils freed themselves, Roman Catholic had passed by on the inside to claim the silver medal, while CHA crossed the line in third place.

In the regular-season Manny Flick races, Roman had beaten CHA several times, but by increasingly smaller margins. At Stotes, the Blue Devils qualified third in Friday’s head racing, but then beat Roman in the semifinals that afternoon, and seemed about to do so again in Saturday’s final. The Cahillites appeared to be headed for fourth in the finals before the CHA/North Allegheny mishap.

As Chestnut Hill was closing in on the silver medal, one of rowers caught a crab, which in itself may not have kept the Devils from finishing second.

Stroke Don Leatherwood related, “North Allegheny, which for some reason had turned a little closer to us, caught up to us while we were crabbed. I don’t think they had really been steering with us in mind, because we were a good bit ahead of them at that point.”

Roman was the beneficiary of the mishap, coming up from fourth place to win the silver medal while the oars of the other two boats were fouled.

“Even while we were tangled up,” Leatherwood said, “we were still trying to get across the line, because we were so close to it.”

Curiously, it was North Allegheny that filed a protest, but after the incident was reviewed by regatta officials, CHA remained the bronze medalist.

The earliest qualifying races on Friday morning hadn’t gone well for the Devils. In the most popular categories, the schools with the 18 fastest times advanced into three six-boat semifinal heats, with the top two finishers in those contests going on to the finals. In events with fewer entries, the fastest dozen boats were slotted into two semifinals, and the top three moved on.

Up against a very large field of competitors, Chestnut Hill’s junior four (Jack Susanin [cox], Sam Bissell [stroke], Brendan Spearing, Will Standish, Buck Wolters) was timed 31st out of 51 boats, and the Devils’ junior double, manned by Gordon Anthony and Ethan Wang, missed the semifinals by just one place as they ranked 13th out of 18.

The other boat that didn’t qualify was a long shot to begin with. A group of CHA freshmen who had been sculling all season had switched to sweep rowing (one oar per person instead of two) just four days earlier. The freshman eight category is the only one provided for ninth graders at Stotesbury, so at least these Blue Devil rookies (Alec Rankin [cox], Walt Palmer [stroke], Ian Thompson, Zach Baron, Graham Masker, Chris Eisenhower, Gabe Piuleac, Conlan LaRouche, Drew Ansel) got to participate in the nation’s oldest and largest high school regatta. Their hopes of qualifying took a hit when one rower’s seat came off the track, and the boat came in 38th out of the 41 that started off.

“It was a way of extending their season one more race,” said CHA coach Steve McGuinn, “and giving them the chance to compete at Stotesbury.”

Phil Schweitzer, who won the City Champs gold medal in the junior single shortly after starting to row solo, stepped up to the senior single last weekend, making it through to the semi’s by placing 11th out of 26 head racers. He wound up fifth in his semifinal heat on Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, CHA’s senior double containing Pete Miller and Sam Franklin went all the way through to the finals. They qualified easily – fifth out of 23 – then finished third in their semifinal behind a pair of crews from Ontario, Canada, St. Francis and Governor Simcoe.

In the process, the Chestnut Hill scullers placed ahead of a Haverford School duo that had beaten them for the gold medal at the City Championships. A relatively new tandem, Miller and Franklin had rowed stroke and bow in a varsity quad much of the spring, but in late April Coach McGuinn recalled a familiar advertising slogan and cut out the middlemen, creating a successful double. Placed against the riverbank wall in lane one for the Stotesbury final, the Devils struggled with the headwind and the turbulence of the river.

“We’re pretty much lightweights compared to the rest of the guys,” Miller pointed out. “It was tough; the wind was taking us over and it was pretty bad in that lane. We were getting our blades caught in the current. All around it was not a good race for us.”

CHA, the only Pennsylvania boat in the final, finished in sixth place, while St. Francis secured the gold medal.

The regatta had begun well for Springside, which sent four of its five entries through to the semifinals. Its lone sweep boat, a lightweight four (Nicole Carbone [cox], Laura Chisholm [stroke], Megan Speight, Larissa Sfedu, Allie Colina), did not advance, clocking in 27th in a field of 38.

After qualifying seventh out of 15, the Lions’ senior quad (Carolyn Chisholm [stroke], Tija Bross, Lucy Rice, Holly Bailey) missed making the finals by just one place, coming in fourth in its heat. Springside’s time of 5:24.60 was actually faster than that of New Jersey’s Ridgewood High School (5:27.43), which took third place in the other semifinal and thus gained a berth in the medal race.

Two other Lions crews ended their run with a fifth-place finish in their semifinal heat races. The senior double powered by Julia Ryan and Jeanne Shotzbarger had advanced by qualifying eighth out of 16 boats in its class, and the Lions’ lightweight double containing Wallis Furman and Christina Sfedu was eighth of 14 in the head races. Out-of-state crews ending up smoking teams from this area in the finals of these two events; Shenendahowa from upstate New York won the lightweight gold, and Ontario’s Ernestown triumphed in the senior double.

This left the junior quad as the Lions’ representative in the finals.

Both Springside and Conestoga had won by large margins in their separate semifinal heats (the Lions by 7.81 seconds, the Pioneers by 9.89). Not a particularly strong starter, the Springside boat was in fourth place at one point early in the championship race, but the Lions soon moved past two of the crews ahead of them.

As the stroke, Jenn Arcidiacono, noted, “the middle is where we usually muscle through.”