03/03/08

National Junior Sculling Head

This year’s National Junior Sculling Head was held on Monday 3rd March in Henley on the day before the Tideway Schools event. It was raced over 3000 metres downstream from Phyllis Court.

Upper Thames entered a women’s J16 quadruple scull with Emma Wirt at bow, Emma-Jane Girling at 2, Zara Milne at 3, and Katherine Poulter coming in at stroke. They finished eighth in a highly competitive field of nineteen crews.

The women’s junior squad is coached by Jamie Smith and Will Satch who are themselves former junior members of Upper Thames Rowing Club and learned to row there.

Their crews had a busy “long weekend” since three members of the coxed four and quad scull crews rowed in a composite Upper Thames /Oxford University Lightweight eight in the Women’s Tideway Head of the River over the full Boat Race course on Saturday 1st March.

They did extremely well to come in the first 100 crews in a field which included Oxford, Cambridge, Oxford-Brookes, Durham, Bath and Birmingham Universities and numerous crews from Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Denmark. Crew : Emma-Jane Girling (bow) Zara Milne, Sara Eldridge, Katie Pollard, Anne Wolfe, Alice Millest, Caris Marsh, Sammy Holt (stroke) and Lois Birrell (cox).