LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL ROWERS MEDAL
Rowers from Simcoe Composite and Holy Trinity captured gold, silver and bronze in Canada’s rowing heartland on the weekend while competing at Rudernkrieg in St. Catharines on Saturday.
Chaundra Monorome of SCS won gold convincingly in the Senior Women’s Open event with a five second lead over the second place finisher. According to Coach Sue Fairley “Chaundra grabbed the lead early in the race and had to continually fight off two challengers who were on her heals all the way. She showed a lot of mental toughness and never gave up! In the final 200 meters, she walked away. It was a great race!”
Eryk Taylor also of SCS, placed second in the Junior Men’s 165 lb. event knocking 3 seconds off his personal best with a time of 7:06.7. “Eryk rowed a beautiful race both technically and strategically” according to Sue Fairley. “It was wonderful to watch!” Fil Matos of Holy Trinity also competed in the Junior Men’s 165 lb. event. He came away with a top ten T-shirt by placing 6th with a personal best time of 7:17.6 that chopped 15 seconds off his personal best.
Zac Azzopardi of Holy Trinity made it a sweep of all medal types by winning bronze in the Senior Men’s 165 lb. event. Azzopardi beat his personal best time by 4 seconds.
Josh Azzopardi and Gillian Byron both of Holy Trinity also competed in the Junior Men’s 150 lb. and Senior Women’s 145 lb events respectively. Azzopardi came away with a personal best time of 7:35.8.
In the previous weekend, high school and elementary school rowers had competed at the Canadian Indoor Rowing Championships held at the Hershey Centre in Mississauga. Local elementary school students from Teeterville, West Lynn, Lynndale Heights, Elgin Avenue and Burford District performed well with 52 out of the 72 participants achieving personal bests and 19 medaling. However, high school rowers were not as successful. “We just seemed off for the day” said Fairley. “It’s nice to see we’ve got it back.”
Future indoor rowing competitions include high school novice racing back in St. Catharines next weekend as well as the Ontario Championships at the end of the month. The Silver Lake Elementary Ergatta hosted by the Silver Lake Rowing Club is scheduled for Saturday April 24th.
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Attached picture from left to right: front – Gillian Byron, Josh Azzopardi; back – Fil Matos, Zach Azzopardi, Eryk Taylor, Chaundra Monorome.
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The Silver Lake Rowing Club was established in 1999 to promote the sport of rowing across Norfolk and Haldimand. For information regarding high school rowing, please call Sue Fairley Head Coach Silver Lake Rowing Club as well as Port Dover CS and Simcoe CS (519-583-0461) and Carla Aitken Coach Holy Trinity (519-428-7592). Regarding elementary school indoor rowing, please contact Dave Wilson (519-426-7013). To find out more about the Silver Lake Rowing Club, please call Jim Dover 519-426-5677 (Club Captain) or visit our web site at: www.silverlakerowingclub.com.