Mother’s of High Point Rowing Club’s scholastic youth team emerged as a crowd favorite at the Head of the Hooch Regatta in Chattanooga, Tennessee on Saturday when they raced in the “Row for the Cure” event.
Known locally as the Mum’s Crew, the team first formed last year when the fledgling High Point program for high school students was just getting started and parents of the students were asked to fill empty seats in the boat to row.
“We need nine rowers to row the boat and some days back then only four students would show up to practice,” recalls rowing coach Gene Kininmonth. “I’d look at the mothers and I think some of them just wanted to leap back in their cars and scream out of the parking lot. But you know a mother will do almost anything for their child and before they knew it they were trying a new sport. And these mothers have proven that rowing is a competitive sport for life.”
On Saturday, High Point’s Mum’s Crew raced through Chattanooga’s winding river course in blazing pink T-shirts, finishing the 5,000 meter race with a time of 25 minutes 41 seconds. Despite finishing in last place, the time was 40 seconds faster than the crew’s time the previous year.
The boat races are a philanthropic event in support the Susan Komen Foundation’s fight against breast cancer. With a breast cancer survivor on board the High Point boat, the Mum’s Crew brought many in the 25,000 strong crowd on the shoreline to their feet with applause. The crew is comprised of coxswain Kim Pollard, stroke Angela Antrim, Mary Horan, Angela Mangus, Barbara Pollard, Debra Catto, Kim Mullins, Chrstine Wright and bowman Marianne Benett.
