Photos by MN Hawk
By Phil Yee
 |
| From youth race 2013 |
About 170 people attended the Village Community boathouse Youth Race on Saturday, November 9th. Twenty crews competed in the event which was won by The Sound School Avengers. Sound School, Building Bridges Building Boats, Stuyvesant High School, Urban Assembly New York Harbor School, and Newburgh Rowing Club participated. While the event was mostly limited to High School Students, there was a college perimeter race in which Borough of Manhattan Community College lost to a team of Stuyvesant High School Alumnae. The team names were the best part: Harbor Zulus, Stuyvesant Mermen, Sound School Fire Breathing Rubber Duckies, Stuyvesant Frosted Flakes, Harbor Conceited, Sound School Ninjas, Villains, & Avengers.
Thanks to Ruth & Sally for the Costco run, Lissa for the coffee makers, Pablo, Frank & Mackie for setting up, Henry & Brendan for launching boats, Dave C., Phil Shinn & Brenden on the chase boat, Mary Nell for the fish chowder, Michael Anton as MC, Pat McShane on the leaderboard, Joe, David, Eric, Alex & Dexter for manning the floating dock, Eric Russell & Hilary for the marine radios and working both ends of the sprint, Jenny, Margaret, Sheldon & Karl for cooking, and Rene for helping to keep the youths safe.
Sixteen teams from four different rowing groups including Newburgh, Sound School, Harbor School (UANYHS) and Stuyvesant High School competed in the fourth annual VCB Youth Race. The wind was whipping at 16 mph out of the southwest making it a challenging day for the crews.About 150 people attended the event.
The day started with a race against the clock around the perimeter the buoys in the mooring field. The Girls winner was “G Boat” from Harbor School had the best combined time of 8:28 minutes. The three mixed winners were “Corsairs B1” from Newburgh with the third best time in the group at 7:03 minutes. The “A Squad” from Harbor School clocked in at 6:47 minutes. The Stuyvesant “Flying Sea Monkeys” logged the best combined time of 6:30 Minutes and also had the best single time of 3:14 minutes around the buoys.
The Girls final was deemed a tie due to inadequate instructions to the crews and bad communications with the race starter. However, it was an exciting which included at least two T-bone collisions and one oar lost and recovered. The mixed final, a race to the Sanitation Pier and back was won by the Stuyvesant High School team “Flying Sea Monkeys.”
All the coaches agreed that Youth Rowing in NYC has come a long way since a decade ago when the NYC teams would place last or in the back of the pack in Hull lifesaving Museum’s Icebreaker Race, the fixed seat championship races. In the last three years youth crews from VCB have come to dominate top positions in their class of boat.
Tony Rentschler shot this video of the Youth Race:
http://vimeo.com/32023328
