Maidenhead Rowing Club's group of Advanced Junior boys and girls had a very busy couple of weeks flying the flag for Maidenhead in Nottingham and taking part in trials for GB Junior selection for various events planned for the end July.

GB Junior Boys Trials
Maidenhead's J16 boys Dave Jones and Sam Ashburner with coach Tom Jost were selected to participate at the Coupe de la Jeunesse, held in Ravenna, Italy July 24th and 25th. Dave Jones was selected to compete in the single sculls and Tom Jost appointed his GB coach. Sam Ashburner will be in the Coupe quad. Both boys, Dave and Sam together with their coach Tom Jost should be congratulated on making it through the GB trials to gain selection for this International event.

GB J16 Trials
Four Maidenhead Junior girls (Charlotte Weeks, Laurian Pepper, Louise Entwistle and Ally Brooks) entered their first trials for GB J16 junior selection, for a GB/France match to take place at the end of July. Trials took place over 1500mtrs at Holme Pierrepont Nottingham on Friday 9th July. Maidenhead entered a double scull in the morning trials and a quadruple scull in the afternoon trials. Both crews entered from Maidenhead were made up of girls racing above their age group. Despite this,  Louise Entwistle and Ally Brooks came very close to causing an upset by pushing the National Schools J16 double sculls champions, Newark RC all the way down the course, taking a slight lead at the halfway point, and racing all the way to the finish line, and finishing only 2 seconds behind Newark and 3 lengths ahead Hollingworth Lake RC who won a silver at this age group at the recent National Schools.  Charlotte Weeks and Laurian Pepper then teamed up with Louise Entwistle and Ally Brooks to compete in the quad time trials. This young crew also raced well and finished in second place just 6 seconds behind Molesey RC and ahead of Worcester RC and LEH School. Both crews demonstrated that they were up on the pace of the leading crews in the country at this J16 level. These results set the girls up well for returning next year to compete again and possibly win their first GB vests.

At the Franco-GB J16 match, held in Vitre, France, the Newark scullers went on to comfortably take the Gold Medal by nearly 7 seconds. This shows that the Maidenhead J15 girls are already competitive at an international J16 level. Next year they will be even quicker!

The Coupe de Jeunesse - Results

Saturday. In the second heat of the Junior Men's Single Sculls, Dave Jones performed well to come home a comfortable second behind Adrien Brozek, a strong French sculler, and qualify for the afternoon's A Final. The Quadruple Scull, with Sam Ashburner on board, also performed well and in a close race came home 3rd to also qualify for the A Final.
Conditions in the afternoon were much faster and Dave Jones showed his quality to win Silver in the M1x A Final. The quad were also much quicker but failed to medal, finishing a couple of lengths adrift from the top 3.

Sunday saw a series of straight finals and another chance for the GB crews to perform on a European stage. The Junior Single Sculls saw a resurgence of Federico Ustolin, the Italian sculler who was 4th on the Saturday, and he finished 1st, ahead of Brozek, with Dave Jones holding a comfortable Bronze medal position. With different opposition the Quad again were placed out of the medals in 4th, but showed another consistent performance despite the very short time they have spent together as a crew.

Billy Brooks
Captain Juniors