St Edward's Chronicle October 2016

30 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

Rowing By Peter Rudge, Master i/c Rowing

Henley Royal Regatta is always the focus of the season for our boys’ 1st VIII. Last term saw consistent development from the crew enabling them to produce their strongest performances of the year during Henley week. An emphatic performance on the Wednesday saw them despatch The King’s School, Chester, before they faced Hampton School on the Thursday. This proved a superb race: Hampton had the edge on us based on their performances throughout the season but the boys raced with enormous composure to preserve a narrow lead throughout the cauldron of noise that is the Henley course before drawing away in the closing stages as Hampton’s belief cracked. Such a performance under pressure was inspirational to see. This hard-fought victory put them through to a quarter final against Eton on the Friday. The boys were unable to live with the pace of the crew from Eton but lost nothing in defeat to a crew who went on to win the event. It was a very strong Henley week from a crew who had also made the Final of Championship Eights at National Schools earlier in the term and showed once again that St Edward’s can compete at the highest level in school rowing.

The girls’ senior group spent the Summer Term demonstrating just how far girls’ rowing has developed. At National Schools they were desperately unlucky to just miss out on the final of Championship Eights by one place but still produced the best ever performance by a girls’ 1st VIII at the Regatta. They took this form through to Women’s Henley where, racing in a coxed four, they qualified comfortably in the opening time trial, defeated Haberdashers’ Monmouth in the second round before racing with great determination against Emanuel School in the quarter final. They were unable to match the power of the Emanuel crew but fought extremely hard in defeat. Qualifying a girls’ quad for Henley Royal Regatta is very much the target as girls’ rowing at St Edward’s continues to develop; although the crew were unsuccessful this year, they were very close. With three of the crew returning this coming year it will be their main focus throughout the season. For Tilly Catlin ( Esher CofE High ) this was to be her last race in St Edward’s colours, having played a huge role in her crew’s success over the last two years. Selected to race for England in the Home Countries Regatta, she went on to win two gold medals in both the four and the eight.

Last year’s outstanding Fourth Form VIII

The younger squads within the boat club also achieved their share of success – there’s not enough space to detail them all. A major highlight of the year was the performance of the Fourth Form girls. They became the first Fourth Form girls’ eight from St Edward’s to qualify for the final at National Schools and fought so hard to achieve their ranking of eighth in the country. Our Fourth Form boys’ eight raced at an extremely high level all year and were desperately unlucky to just miss out on the final at the National Schools Regatta. The final highlight to mention must be the performance of our boys’ Shell B crew who became the first B J14 octo to reach the national final. They raced superbly throughout the early rounds and were in contention for a medal in the final until an unlucky mistake pushed them back with around 200m to go. A national ranking of sixth place is a great achievement and they should be very proud to achieve something that has not been done by a St Edward’s Shell B octo before. With plenty of wins during the season for both our girls’ and boys’ Shell A and B crews, and two extremely fast Fourth Form eights who were successful at national level, the boat club is in great health throughout the School and there is a great deal of promise for the year to come.

The 1st VIII after their victory over Hampton at Henley Royal Regatta