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Juniors Win Gold at Hooch
The Austin Rowing Club competed at the Head of the Chattahoochee Regatta on November 7-8 in Chattanooga, TN. The regatta is the second largest in the country with over 1750 boats racing and teams from as far away as Canada, Arizona, Ohio, and Florida. This year's Hooch brought gorgeous weather, fast race conditions and exciting rowing.
The regatta started off with the ARC priority boats. The lightweight eight had their best row of the year to finish a solid 5th place. Coxswain Avery Ashwill steered a great course in the tough conditions and gave her crew the edge. Next to race, the novice girls eight continued to dominate and won the event by 41 seconds over a team from Florida. Stroke seat, Caroline Allan, took the stroke rate up half way through the race and held strong through the finish line.
Afternoon races included the varsity double and novice four event. The doubles event was one of the largest with over 50 boats entered and four boats from ARC. Ellen Denum and Sara Hyten finished in 7th place with teammates Lucy Ellis and Nikki Ulug in 15th place. In the novice girls four race ARC had last minute line-up changes due to illness but this did not effect the novice squad. They rowed the new line-up for the first time and finished an impressive 2nd place.
On the final day of racing the varsity single was first with Sara Hyten finishing 11th closely followed by teammate Nikki Ulug in 13th place. Having one of the best performances of the weekend, Katie Gilbert and Mariel Dempster raced the pair event and finished 4th just seconds from first place. Racing concluded with the quad event. The quad is a specialty boat of ARC but this fall a secondary consideration to the eights. ARC had four boats entered in this event. The foursome of Ellen Denum, Sara Hyten, Nicole Brandt, and Nikki Ulug rowed a great race until right before the finish line when they had to stop rowing, causing them to lose time. They still finished an impressive 5th place. The were followed by teammates Lucy Ellis, Caroline Allan, Stephanie Bolke, and Brett Mele who finished 8th overall. The rest of the team finished a solid 19th and 21st out of a field of 30 boats.
The team concluded the fall season with some good racing and a fabulous time at the Head of the Chattahoochee. The juniors are back in action in February at the Erg Rodeo.
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