College Sport: Rowers at home among big guns

Glendowie College's Rhiannon Koni-Webb, Jasmine Brake, Sarah Crummey and coach Greg Reid.

Glendowie College takes eight medals for season, despite girls double giving themselves a fright in final

Glendowie College has two gold medals and two silvers to savour from the Maadi Cup, making the east Auckland co-ed school the seventh-ranked rowing school in the country, and the second in the Auckland region.

Not bad given its relatively small roll of around 1000. The girls are leading the way, with Sarah Crummey and Jasmine Brake clinching the Under 17 girls double sculls at last month's regatta in Twizel. Brake had earlier taken Glendowie's first Maadi gold in the Under 15 girls double sculls with Rhiannon Koni-Webb. The Under 15 and Under 17 coxed quad crews took silvers, while every one of the 22 Glendowie Maadi squad rowers made A or B finals.

This was the culmination of a successful schools rowing season for Glendowie, which saw no less than eight medals (four gold, two silver and two bronze) at the North Island SS champs at Lake Karapiro. The Head of Harbour regatta at Lake Pupuke in February also yielded plenty of success for the school in division one.

Crummey, in year 12, said she and Brake (year 11) had to overcome a real rowing obstacle to win their Maadi A final by just one second from Southland Girls' High School.

"We had a bit of a hiccup in the first 500m. We were on the buoy line and caught a crab so we dropped back a boat length. I think Jas and I then got really angry and picked it back up."

Brake concurs, relishing her first visit to the South Island and her second Maadi.

"We work together well. Last year we raced together in the Under 16s. We knew we would be up there but we weren't sure about the South Island crews, because it was a hard competition. It gave us a fright catching the crab, so we had to really push through."

Brake and Koni-Webb made a good start in their Under 15 final and gradually built on their lead, eventually heading Craighead Dio by seven seconds.

Koni-Webb felt the pressure, but loved the atmosphere, as Glendowie worked its way through heats, quarters, semis and the final. The girls slept well at the end of a taxing week.

The Glendowie rowers train in the Tamaki Estuary and this trio are all members of the St George's Rowing Club, so they are clearly committed and passionate about the sport.

Glendowie rowing coach Greg Reid is gratified by the top results: "The girls have led the way in the end. The boys were very close, but just weren't able to finish it at Maadi. They had the same potential. We were hoping for a complete whitewash but weren't quite able to pull it off.

"The girls put the work in, so they were the form crews to beat. There were a couple of South Island crews that showed us up in the Under 16 quads last year, so we knew we would be up against it."

He was rapt with the efforts of the girls' Under 18 eights, who made the A final with five novices.

"Glendowie has traditionally been a very small rowing school, but for the second year in a row we've had a record number of rowers. They've really taken to it," says Reid.

As for the gut-wrenching training required to be a top rowing crew, the girls put in around 24 hours a week, so time management with their studies is again paramount.

"You can coach a certain amount of technique, but if they're not strong enough to do it, they can't. They aren't doing as many hours as the results show. We're big on heart rate training so it's the quality of the training. These girls are good role models," says Reid.

And the trio will surely be back at Maadi in 2015 looking for more medals.