Harris gets NZ Junior callup

Collegiate's Jamie Harris has been selected for the New Zealand team at the Junior World Rowing Championships in August.

Wanganui Collegiate's Jamie Harris has booked her seat for the Czech Republic as the first Whanganui-affiliated rower in a couple of seasons to make the NZ Junior Rowing team headed to the world championships.

After national trials for over 40 rowers, the 20-strong squad was announced at Lake Karapiro on Friday, and will begin preparations for the Junior World Rowing Championships at Racice on August 8-12.

Harris has been selected in the group of six girls for the Junior Women's quadruple scull and Reserve Junior Women's double scull.

Justin Wall and Nick Barton will share the coaching duties for the six.

Harris had won bronze as stroke of Collegiate's Under-18 Girls' coxed four at the national secondary school championship regatta in March.

She is the first local to make the New Zealand Junior team in a couple of seasons, with the last being Jackie Gowler and Georgia Nugent-O'Leary of Nga Tawa Diocesan School and Aramoho Wanganui RC, with Gowler following in the footsteps of her Olympian sister Kerri Gowler.

Collegiate's other trialist Jonte Wright did not make the boy's part of the squad.

Three other locals attended the trials and two of them – Whanganui High School's Niamh Monk and Collegiate's Catherine Pearce, were selected in the North Island Under 18 team, who took on South Island Under 18 in a series of races last Thursday and Friday.

South Island won the regatta overall.

Collegiate's Blake Hogan, an Under 16 double scull champion at the secondary school champs, was unsuccessful in breaking into the Under 18 squad.