Clemson, South Carolina – High Point Rowing Club produced a strong showing at the Clemson Sprints Regatta on Saturday by earning numerous finals appearances in the premier eights events.
The Clemson Sprints is one of the strongest regional spring competitions, drawing college and youth rowing teams from Georgia, Tennessee, West Virginia and the Carolinas.
High Point qualified for the finals in all three of the premier high school eights events, earning bronze in the men’s junior novice eights, and fourth place finishes in both the women’s junior novice and high school varsity eights championships. Novice events are for rowers in their first year of racing. After one year of racing high school rowers must race in varsity events.
High Point also earned a bronze medal finish in the women’s lightweight fours championship.
Head coach Gene Kininmonth said he was impressed with the results of the team in Clemson and pointed out that High Point has clearly grown from strength to strength in the past 12 months.
“We saw much stronger competition this week and two take-aways stood out from this event,” said Kininmonth. “Firstly, we have phenomenal athletes on our program – no question. To be finishing top three or four in our events with all the high school programs from so many states here is such a credit to our rowers. The second take away is that if we are going to catch the two or three programs ahead of us we must have an indoor training facility in place for next winter. The elite programs ahead of us this week such as Asheville and Atlanta can either row all though the winter on lakes heated by nuclear power plant cooling systems or they have indoor rowing facilities. We can beat these teams but we clearly need more than three weeks of rowing to do so.”
