Manatee County Youth Rowing’s heralded girls team comes up short at state meet

Luci Derrick, Alexis Greer, Candace Powell and the other members of Manatee County Youth Rowing’s girls first varsity four with cox team pulled their boat out of the water and trudged back to the boat rack slowly.

Trish Chastain walked with them and pulled Derrick in close. The career of one of the most accomplished junior rowers in Manatee County history wasn’t officially over Saturday, but her last chance at another Florida Scholastic Rowing Association championship was.

A few minutes later, the boat was on the rack and Chastain had her four rowers surrounding her for a final huddle after they fell just short of reaching Sunday’s state championship with a fourth-place finish in the repechage at Nathan Benderson Park.

“I’d say this was one of our best spring seasons,” Greer said after Manatee County Youth Rowing (MCYR) finished less than seven seconds out of the top-two position necessary to reach the final in Sarasota.

For a young program, MCYR has already found some success with this current crop of graduating seniors, including Derrick, Greer and Powell. Derrick was a Florida Scholastic Rowing Association (FSRA) champion in 2015 as part of a doubles team. She and Greer, a pair of Palmetto seniors, are committed to Central Florida and will be MCYR’s third and fourth athletes to row at the Division I level.

That ability made Saturday’s early exit at Benderson Park more disappointing. The four with cox, which also includes Southeast’s Maddy Wright and Braden River’s Madison Stahley, posted the sixth fastest time during preliminaries with a personal best of 5:58.80, but the team couldn’t crack the top two in its heat, which was necessary to receive an automatic berth into Sunday’s final. In the repechage, the team was more than four seconds slower and finished in 6:02.90.

MCYR’s four with cox team will be back on the water Sunday at 2:57 p.m. for the petite final at the FSRA Sweep Championships. The club’s girls coxless pair, Allison Cushing and Samantha Whipple, will race at 9:10 a.m. after finishing third in its heat and fourth in the repechage. MCYR’s boys junior eight with cox made a surprise run to the final after finishing second in the repechage. The team of John Greer, Connor Rosenberg, Zachary Morris, Daniel Reynoso, Ryan Pisz, Matthew Klepper, Justin Squires, Joseph McNaughton and Noah Heskin — none of whom are seniors — will race at 1:54 p.m.

Success in the eights is something of a rarity for the slightly smaller MCYR club. The program was founded in 2011 specifically as a Palmetto High School team and began adding athletes from the rest of the county a year later. Now the club has about 70 athletes ranging from middle school through high school. The eight with cox competing in Sunday’s final includes an eighth-grader (Reynoso).

“It’s becoming a little bit more mainstream,” Chastain said. “They used to view rowing as a little bit more of an elitist sport.”

Now, however, when Derrick and Greer head to Orlando in the fall to join UCF — a school with a relatively young program dating only about 10 years — they’ll team with Danielle Wilson, a former Seminole who rowed for MCYR and is a sophomore for the Knights.

It’s at the next level now where this four with cox can leave a legacy. Greer will continue as Derrick’s coxswain, and UCF will provide a glimpse at the sort of athletes MCYR can produce.

“It’s a lot more intense and a lot more practice,” Derrick said, “but we’re super excited.”

This story was originally published April 29, 2017 at 8:33 PM with the headline "Manatee County Youth Rowing’s heralded girls team comes up short at state meet."