Shawnigan Lake School and Brentwood College School both came home with a gold medal from the Canadian Secondary School Rowing Association Championships in St. Catharines, Ont., earlier this month.
Shawnigan's senior girls quad crew of Anna Koehler, Sierra Farr, Alex Lubbe, Annabel Irwin placed first, while Brentwood won gold on the junior men's quad with the crew of Ellis Hollands, Liam Bontkes, Lion Tautz and Alex Ridenour.
"This is the first time ever that Brentwood has won the junior quad at the national rowing championships," said Debbie Sage, the school's head of rowing. "All of these boys will be returning to our rowing program in the fall and bringing with them vast amounts of experience. The future looks bright for the boys and girls programs."
Brentwood sent 17 crews and 50 rowers to St. Catharines, with 12 crews and 49 rowers making the finals. The seven medals were a record number for the school.
In addition to the gold in the junior men's quad, Brentwood took silver in the senior women's eight (Hye Young Ra, Lucy Stanford, Carolyn Barakso, Lucy Digney, Mollie McPhee-Green, Tara Christensen, Kirsten McNeill, Joanna Lancashire and Featherdawn
Florkow), senior women's lightweight eight (Young Ra, Stanford, Barakso, Sophia Auton, Emily Lawrence, Gwyneth Zollmann, Claire DeNure, Mariel Frank and Gillian Marvel), junior women's eight (Paige Ledingham, Tasmin West, Brooke Martin, Renee LaFreniere, Teagan McNeill, Petra Jackson, Ellie Krasny, Stephanie Cheung and Jessica Novecosky) and junior women's coxed four (Martin, LaFreniere, Jackson, Novecosky and Seo Young Ra).
Brentwood also won bronze medals in the senior women's quad (Lancashire, McNeill, Florkow and Christensen), and senior men's eight (Rielly Milne, Kelly Agnew, Louis Barry, Sam Storey, Anton Schultz, Niko Praun, Thomas Griffith, Hayden Frisch and Elliot Rogers).
Shawnigan had nine crews reach the finals. Along with the gold in the senior girls quad, the school won bronze medals in the senior girls coxed four (Farr, Lubbe, Maia du Toit, Nicola Simpson, and Danielle Schmidt) and junior boys lightweight coxed four (Edouard Receveaux, Jeremy Perrott, Felix Haffner, Sean Olson and Elise McKinnon).
Shawnigan's senior boys coxed four was involved in what head of rowing Tim Coy called "the race of the regatta," finishing fourth, just 0.03 seconds out of second place and 0.02 out of third.