With the Easter break now over, racing resumed on the Schuylkill River last Sunday as Germantown Academy, Germantown Friends, Penn Charter, and Springside Chestnut Hill Academy engaged in the fourth Manny Flick/Horvat regatta of 2023.

Mount St. Joseph Academy chose not to participate this time around, opting instead to face less-familiar competitors at the Mercer Invitational in New Jersey.

For Manny Flick Four, the girls' events were in the morning, while the boys competed in the afternoon.

In the first race of the day, SCH's Quinn Seawright placed third of six boats in the girls' gig/novice single, and soon after that the Blue Devils' freshman/novice double with Elizabeth O'Brien and Rose Rush-King won their race with the fastest overall time in the two flights.

The next race for the Devils, the novice quad with Eleanor Ballantin, Lida Goloveyko, Joanna Leon-Palfrey, and Cooper Bode also brought victory, as the foursome won the first flight with the second-fastest time overall.

In the lone flight of the girl' freshman quad, the victory went to SCH's Charlotte Trayes, Iris Dobeck, Ariya Goswami, and Grian O'Connor, while GFS came in third with Nola Schaenen, Isabella Ammon, Adeline Williams, and Sylvia Kim.

The JV double event had Penn Charter's "A" boat (Zoe Page, Grace Magee) and "B" boat (Ella Bretschneider, Bella Salvi) placing first and second, respectively, in the first flight. However, a GFS tandem (Lucy Yanella, Lila Donovan) had a faster time than both as it secured second place in the other flight behind a boat that came up from Alexandria City (Va.) High School.

Germantown Friends again faced a strong out-of-state crew in the JV quad.  In what was easily the faster of the two flights, the Tigers (Cara Appleberry, Rebecca Rasmussen, Natalie Lau, Leah Cornejo) were runner-up to Girls' Preparatory School of Chattanooga, Tenn. In the second flight, first place went to Springside Chestnut Hill (Nadia Stockman, Emma Ludwikowski, Maeve O'Connor, Olivia Caione).

Lower Merion High School won the first flight of the girls' varsity double in six minutes and 29/100 seconds, while Penn Charter "A" (Ellie Choate, Ella Bretschneider) was very close in time (6:01.44) as it captured the second flight. Farther behind them, in second, was the Quakers' "B" boat in the event (Charlotte Baker, Lindsay Gadsden).

In the second section of the varsity quad, the slower of the two flights, SCH came in second with Alexandra Cross, Olivia Hayes, Emma Schwartz, and Dora Ward, while Germantown Academy's Aisosa Idahosa, Ryleigh Dougherty, Sarah Beth Sandifer and Olivia Shafer finished third.

In the afternoon, the first victory for area boys was earned by the freshman quad representing GFS (Chenyue Peng, Daniel Sandroni, Shenghao Yuan, Andrew Li). Their time in the second section was just two seconds off of the figure turned in by Ridgewood (N.J.) High School, the winner of the first flight.

In the boys' JV events, both the single and the double entered by the GFS Tigers faced large field of competitors. Julian Cheung, in his single, won his flight and recorded the second-fastest time out of 18 entries. In the double, a duo that's been together for awhile (Neelmani Robinson and Leo Katowitz) placed third in a fast flight with the fourth-best time in a 20-boat field. Germantown Academy's Max Rinnander and Andrew Wells placed third in another flight.

The JV quad from GFS (Anand Rajagopalan, Luke Lendler, Shachar Pinto, Jasper Furnas) was just one second off the fastest time overall in the two flights, winning the first section. Racing behind overall winner Seton Hall Prep, Penn Charter (Eli Moulton, James Foley, Jack Bowen, Mac Haines) was the runner-up in flight two.

Two Germantown Academy seniors who raced together in a double at the start of the 2023 season, Haiden Bonczek and Max Goldman, rowed varsity singles last Sunday. Bonczek placed third and Goldman was fourth in the third flight of the event, which was faster than the second heat and slower than the first.

The varsity double from GFS, manned by Aidan Cusack and Josh Cappiello, finished third in the first of four flights, where New Jersey's Ridgewood set the tempo and was the fastest boat in the entire field by seven seconds. Being in this quick company netted the Tiger tandem the third-best time out of four flights, 5:15.17.

Fourth in time were Penn Charter's James Glomb and Scott Sweeney, who won the second section in 5:21.85. Another Quakers combo, Matthew Clarke and Harrison Signorello, came in second in the fourth flight, with a time of 5:47.91.