Walton Juniors help Thames London Region win at JIRR

Walton Juniors help Thames London Region win at JIRR

Walton’s juniors made a massive contribution to the Thames London Region winning a clean sweep of the Boy’s Trophy, the Girl’s Trophy and the overall Championship for the first time in the event’s history.  Everybody made the A-finals including Matt and Hal in J16 and J15, both testing themselves in the single for the first time at national level.  J16 doubles are some of the toughest events at this level, and Tom/Ardan and Alex/Katherine got very close to the medals in very tight races.  Hal then helped the team out again by joining up with Tideway Scullers to form a very impressive J15 quad which dominated the field to win gold.  Amelia and Tallulah have not raced the double at this level before, but learned from their heat to win a very well-deserved silver medal in their final.  The crew who did the most for the team were Rowan/Aidan/Oscar/Patrick and cox Millie D.  When the selected J16 eight couldn’t make it, these J15s jumped into a scratch eight with Tideway Scullers’ J16 quad crew.  The heat was their practice outing, and racing against long-established school eights, they had to race all the way to the line to scrape into the A-final.  Our four then had the J15 4+ final, and despite leading from the start, they were feeling that eights race in their legs and were rowed through into the silver medal in the last three strokes.  They then had to raise themselves from that bitter disappointment and race the eights final, where they showed incredible determination to move up to fourth place overall and get more valuable points for the team – a wonderful effort from them all.

Thames London team IMG_5497 small IMG_5474 IMG_5465 IMG_5438 IMG_5422 IMG_5397