Newport Aquatic Center dominates USRowing Southwest Youth Championship
Newport Aquatic Center has made the case that it should receive strong consideration for the best junior rowing program in the country.
Throughout the season, the local club has produced sterling performances, leading up to its opportunity to defend a national title in the boys’ eight-man competition.
For the record:
8:35 p.m. May 29, 2018Newport Aquatic Center: In the May 29 Sports section, the story misspelled rower Harley Zieper’s last name as Zeiper.
Checkpoints allowed the coaches and athletes to assess their progress. The first came in February at the Fault Line Face-off in Orinda. From there, Newport Aquatic Center’s next big test came at the Crew Classic in San Diego, the largest sprint regatta in California.
“Those were the races that were prioritized heading into the season that we really wanted to do well at, and we won both of those,” Newport Aquatic Center novice coach Marcel Stiffey said. “From the Crew Classic, we kind of shifted our focus toward the regional championships in preparation for that.”
Whatever the club did in terms of getting ready for the USRowing Southwest Youth Championship, it worked.
Newport Aquatic Center dominated the medal count, earning 11 gold medals and four silver medals in the nationals qualifying tournament at Lake Natoma in Sacramento County on May 4-6.
Sixteen entries were registered on the boys’ side for the Newport Aquatic Center, and all but one of them came away with a medal.
“You could tell that this was a really strong group, top to bottom,” Stiffey said. “I think there are 32 athletes going to the national championships, the most that the NAC has ever sent.
“It’s actually the most amount of entries from a club in the nation.”
Newport Aquatic Center won the boys’ regional title 261-151 over the Oakland Strokes, the largest margin of victory ever recorded at the junior regional championship.
The 2,000-meter races often come down to a matter of seconds.
“We always joke about it because that’s nine months of training for a six-minute race,” Corona del Mar High student and UC Santa Barbara commit Harley Zieper said. “In the eight-person boat, I think it was a three-second margin.”
Newport Aquatic Center (6 minutes 2.476 seconds) defeated the Oakland Strokes (6:05.485) in the eight-man varsity race.
Six of the members of the Newport Aquatic Center’s eight-man varsity team have committed to college rowing programs.
Three of them hail from Newport Harbor. Natasha Ellis and Blake Richter will attend Cal, and Justin Coar is headed to Texas Christian University.
Spencer Ewanick (Cal) is from Orange Lutheran.
Jake Marlo (Harvard) and Zieper go to CdM. The duo also competes in the two-man race, which they won (7:03.977) by less than a second over the team of Dylan Munt and Nathan Klaff from Capital Rowing Club (7:04.744).
Newport Aquatic Center also has several lightweight (athletes weighing under 150 pounds) rowing commits. They are Newport Harbor’s Harrison White (Utah), Mater Dei’s Peter Emmel (UCLA), CdM’s Isaac Clark (Georgetown) and Pacifica’s Elisha Cameron (Delaware).
In addition, the Newport Aquatic Center finished fourth in the girls’ competition with 146 points. The Oakland Strokes set the pace with 201 points.
The four-man quad (two oars per rower) boat race highlighted the efforts of the Newport Aquatic Center girls, as the club will be sending a crew to nationals in the event for the first time.
The historic quartet is made up of Back Bay high school students. CdM’s Nikolett Provenza (Alabama) and Nicole Harr (Columbia) are joined by Newport Harbor’s Delaney Gendron (SMU) and Melissa Bradford (SMU). They placed third in 7:21.303.
The top three in each varsity race advanced to the U.S. Rowing Youth National Championships, which will be held back at Lake Natoma from June 8-10.
The Newport Aquatic Center will be sending its men’s varsity 8+, men’s lightweight 8+, men’s lightweight “B” 8+, men’s lightweight 4+ and women’s quad to nationals.
Twitter: @ProfessorTurner
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