Post by carolinemoney on Dec 8, 2020 0:01:27 GMT 12
From Mr Murison:
Despite the name of the event, due to this being a virtual competition, rowers from across Europe could enter. In the sixth form boys event on Saturday, from the 84 entries, there were rowers from 14 different countries from Russia to Ireland. In the sprints James Robson and Joel Hammond both came in the top 20 in this very international field.
On Sunday we had the main racing for GMSBC, starting with our Year 8s at 12:00. The boys all performed well and finished fairly close together with Can Gucumengil 8th, Will Allen 9th and Conor Quann 10th. Gold and Silver had all gone to eastern European rowers. The girls had an all GBR field and Lauren Kennedy came 3rd in Bronze medal position with Georgia Mackay 4th.
Year 9s had a frustrating time with technology letting us down but Poppy Spence, despite a delayed start pulled an impressive 1008m in 4 minutes to come 8th. In the 500m sprints Poppy came 10th and Abigail Forgenie came 13th. In the boys sprints Archie Johnston was our top scorer, with Lucas Wolgers-Gray coming 1 second behind.
Year 10 boys mainly went for the 500m sprints and Will Clayton came 11th. It was the girls again that had the home crowd screaming. In the 5 minute race there were a number of international unknowns and after one minute Emily Downing was uncharacteristically in 6th position with Christina Baxter in 5th. As the race progressed, Emily’s consistent pacing saw her working through the rowers ahead of her and with 1 minute to go she hit the front and continued to pull away from the rest to secure yet another Gold medal. Christina came an impressive 6th with a girl from Ukraine and another from Denmark just ahead of her. In the 500m sprints the GMS girls put in another storming performance with Emily taking Gold, Olivia Fyfe Bronze and Peyton Nugent coming 5th.
The year 11 events, the star performance was from Tom Wiles with 7th place in the sprints. However, all the rowers produced significant personal bests in their races which was exciting.
The last events of the afternoon were the relays where sadly the event only holds on junior age category. However, they did hold the races with similar age groups in each race. Our year 9 girls crew of Poppy Spence, Abigail Forgenie, Charlotte Greening and Imogen Holder came second amongst their piers which was a great race. Shortly after we had the final girls race which saw our year 10 crew up against our 6th form girls, along with half a dozen international crews in amongst the domestic competitors. It was always going to be a close thing between our two crews and the experienced 6th formers took the early lead, but the raw power of the taller year 10s saw the gap narrowing and on the line, the two crews dead heated in 6th = for the event.
The boys relay saw the year 10s and year 9s being the fastest in their respective age groups which was encouraging. The sixth form boys team of Joel Hammond, Leo Simpson, James Robson and Henry Gavin, had a close race in the last of the boys races and were in 2nd place for the early stages , but from half way moved into the lead and moved away. What we had not realised at the time was that a crew in the previous race had gone even further, so the team will have to settle for Silver medal.
Despite the name of the event, due to this being a virtual competition, rowers from across Europe could enter. In the sixth form boys event on Saturday, from the 84 entries, there were rowers from 14 different countries from Russia to Ireland. In the sprints James Robson and Joel Hammond both came in the top 20 in this very international field.
On Sunday we had the main racing for GMSBC, starting with our Year 8s at 12:00. The boys all performed well and finished fairly close together with Can Gucumengil 8th, Will Allen 9th and Conor Quann 10th. Gold and Silver had all gone to eastern European rowers. The girls had an all GBR field and Lauren Kennedy came 3rd in Bronze medal position with Georgia Mackay 4th.
Year 9s had a frustrating time with technology letting us down but Poppy Spence, despite a delayed start pulled an impressive 1008m in 4 minutes to come 8th. In the 500m sprints Poppy came 10th and Abigail Forgenie came 13th. In the boys sprints Archie Johnston was our top scorer, with Lucas Wolgers-Gray coming 1 second behind.
Year 10 boys mainly went for the 500m sprints and Will Clayton came 11th. It was the girls again that had the home crowd screaming. In the 5 minute race there were a number of international unknowns and after one minute Emily Downing was uncharacteristically in 6th position with Christina Baxter in 5th. As the race progressed, Emily’s consistent pacing saw her working through the rowers ahead of her and with 1 minute to go she hit the front and continued to pull away from the rest to secure yet another Gold medal. Christina came an impressive 6th with a girl from Ukraine and another from Denmark just ahead of her. In the 500m sprints the GMS girls put in another storming performance with Emily taking Gold, Olivia Fyfe Bronze and Peyton Nugent coming 5th.
The year 11 events, the star performance was from Tom Wiles with 7th place in the sprints. However, all the rowers produced significant personal bests in their races which was exciting.
The last events of the afternoon were the relays where sadly the event only holds on junior age category. However, they did hold the races with similar age groups in each race. Our year 9 girls crew of Poppy Spence, Abigail Forgenie, Charlotte Greening and Imogen Holder came second amongst their piers which was a great race. Shortly after we had the final girls race which saw our year 10 crew up against our 6th form girls, along with half a dozen international crews in amongst the domestic competitors. It was always going to be a close thing between our two crews and the experienced 6th formers took the early lead, but the raw power of the taller year 10s saw the gap narrowing and on the line, the two crews dead heated in 6th = for the event.
The boys relay saw the year 10s and year 9s being the fastest in their respective age groups which was encouraging. The sixth form boys team of Joel Hammond, Leo Simpson, James Robson and Henry Gavin, had a close race in the last of the boys races and were in 2nd place for the early stages , but from half way moved into the lead and moved away. What we had not realised at the time was that a crew in the previous race had gone even further, so the team will have to settle for Silver medal.