WHAT a day for King’s Ely at the National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships – smiles, team spirit aplenty and two Silver medals!
60 of our rowers competed in the event on February 28th, which involved around 3,000 Year 7-13 rowing students from across the country.
The first race of the day saw an impressive row from Year 12 student, Holly Burke, who held off the chasing pack to win a Silver medal.
The next races saw our Year 8-9 rowers compete. Yanki Ertem in Year 8 produced an amazing performance to come 5th out of 180 racers in his category.
The middle part of the day saw the relay events take place. Our Year 10, 11 and 12 girls performed amicably to finish 8th out of 21 teams in the boat race relay over 16 minutes and 19 seconds (the Oxford v Cambridge record time). The Year 11 boys finished 7th out of 18 teams and our Year 9 boys hammered home an impressive 9th place in the relay out of 84 crews.
The afternoon saw our Year 10 and 11 rowers take to the floor. The Year 10’s gave us some great results in arguably the most competitive events of the afternoon.
Jessica Harding achieved an impressive 11th place finish out of 116 girls, and Will Biggs and Bertie Whymark finished 21st and 25th out of 98 entries.
In the Year 11 girls’ race, Mia Gray finished 5th, closely followed by Steph Watson (7th) and Annie Moore (12th) out of 46 entries.
The Year 11 boys wrapped up proceedings of the day. In a fascinating heat, Jakob Donaubauer powered his way to a Silver medal – doubling the medal count for the day.
Jakob was closely followed by Will Buckingham roaring home in the last minute to a 10th place finish.
A day to remember for sure – congratulations to everyone involved!