Maidenhead visited Evesham Regatta in the shape of Matthew Best one of our junior scullers from Tom Josts group. Matt, racing J16 singles over 1000 meters won his event despite tough competition from Llandaff who had split up their Junior Quad scull to challenge for the trophy.

Matt raced within himself in the heats winning comfortably with a distance of 4 lengths. In the final Matt came up against Llandaff's best J16 sculler who stayed with Matt up to the 600meter marker but Matt stayed calm and focused on sculling with good technique and under rated his opposition powered away to win by some 2 1/2 lengths.

Burway Regatta.

Maidenhead entered 12 crews in six events (4 of the events being mixed at this young age group) and after a full days racing this young squad achieved five crews through to race in four finals.

The club came home with one event win, Carmel Bevan in Mixed J12 singles.

Three Maidenhead girls entered this Mixed J12 singles event, Lucy Brockwell (who had been very ill the previous day), Anna Campbell, and Carmel Bevan.

There was a total entry of 10. As luck would have it, Lucy and Anna were drawn against each other in the first round. The race was stopped at around 100m to go because they were steering into each other, restarted from that point and Anna went through.

Carmel was drawn against Goldswain and their race was also stopped at around 100m to go, again because they were both rowing into the middle, restarted from that point and Carmel went through.

In the second round Anna met Ashworth from TSS. He was leading comfortably and just really sitting on her at around the 100m mark, but he was too confident. He forgot to look around, steered into the boats at the same time knocking himself off his seat...he could probably have still got back at Anna but he just panicked and went back into the boats for a second time. Anna went through.

A prime lesson in never giving up, and never getting too confident.

Carmel had a good race against Corless from Staines to go through comfortably to the final.

So Anna and Carmel were in the final against each other. They both had good starts and stayed in touch all the way down the course to about that 100m mark...which by the way we had previously designated as the kill zone or final push point on our walk through ... they both put in their final bursts and Carmel went ahead to win.


Billy Brooks
Captain Juniors