Area Rowers Impress at States, Prep for Nationals

It was a Mother’s Day bling all around when Pelham Community Rowing Association (PCRA) officially sealed its powerhouse status, capturing eight gold, six silver and two bronze medals at the recent New York State Rowing Championships in Saratoga Springs. 

The event brought together the best club and school rowing teams from throughout New York state. More than 600 boats from 75 teams rowed the 1,500-meter course on Fish Creek during the May 26 time trials. Seventeen of PCRA’s 24 entries in the various sweep and sculling events from novice to varsity qualified for finals on Sunday, 16 of them medaling, itself an impressive showing. 

At the end of a stunning day of racing in picture-perfect 80 degree weather, five PCRA boats and 19 high school rowers and coxswains had qualified for competition at US Rowing Youth National Championships from June 8 to 10 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  While this will mark the third year PCRA has sent boats to nationals, it will be the first time the club has ever qualified a sweep boat (one oar per rower; in sculling boats, each rower has two oars). That takes PCRA to a new level of competitive excellence.

For the second year in a row, the Girls Senior Quad came in first place, taking the New York State Championship title. With a time of 5:56.10, they handily beat Saratoga Rowing by more than 30 seconds, notwithstanding the latter’s home-court-advantage. Pelham High School senior and team captain Tessa Dikkers rowed for her mom who couldn’t be there. Mieke and Derrick Dikkers own Le Provencal restaurant in Mamaroneck, and Mother’s Day is just too busy a day to take off—even if your child is rowing the race of her life. But mom followed the race via phone from the finish line, keeping hundreds of her customers apprised of the girls’ victorious row and the ultimate treasured Mother’s Day gift: a first place trophy and gold medal.  

But you can bet the Dikkers have already bought their plane tickets to Tennessee; seeing their daughter row at nationals for the second year in a row is not something they’ll likely miss.

There was added poignancy to the race as these girls have been training and rowing together now for over a year, capturing a plethora of first place medals during three racing seasons, including a 10th place national ranking last year. But the state finals marked their last race together in regular season, as three of the girls will be graduating next month. Dikkers is heading to number one-ranked Division I women’s rowing team, the University of Virginia, while Mamaroneck senior Yasmine Hemida was recruited to Syracuse University. Bronxville senior Claudia Jensen will be rowing for Trinity College. Of this winning quad, only Harrison High School sophomore Liliane Lindsay will be left to carry on PCRA’s tradition of sculling excellence.

The Pelham Boy’s Senior Quad also conquered rival Saratoga, but by a nail-biting margin of just more than a second. Capturing the championship ensures that the boat will also be Tennessee-bound for a berth at nationals.

“Our win felt really good especially because we’re a smaller, lighter crew than most of our competition, and we had our own doubts about pulling it off," said Matt Palmer, a Pelham senior and PCRA team captain. "But we just felt solid right off the start and stayed strong coming down the course.”

In a surprise upset, the PCRA Girls Lightweight 8+ raced to a 13 second triumph over strong contender for gold, Pittsford.  

“We’re super excited about this win, since this will be PCRA’s first sweep boat at Nationals. Before this, PCRA was mostly known as a sculling team,” said Pelham junior Mariah Ippolito.  

While sculling (two oars) is the most common form of rowing internationally, U.S. collegiate rowing is almost exclusively sweep (one oar per rower) making this boat’s win an important step for PCRA rowers in terms of collegiate recognition and competitive rigor.

Impressively, two of the girls from the 8+ (MaryGail DiBuono, senior at Mamaroneck High School and Emma Landauer, senior at The Bronx High School of Science) also went on to take silver in the Girls Lightweight Double, qualifying them in two events for Nationals contention. Landauer, whose previous team had disbanded just weeks before the start of spring season, came to PCRA because of its coaching excellence, solid racing reputation and strong training regimen, despite the long commute from the Bronx each day after school.

The PCRA Boys Lightweight Double’s journey to gold tells its own tale of perseverance. This dynamic duo started racing together last summer at US Rowing Junior National Team Development Camp and thought they really had the makings of a winning boat. Just one minor hiccup: Joshua Schoenbart lives in Syosset, on Long Island’s north shore. But Josh, a senior at Syosset High School who will be rowing next year for Dartmouth University, managed to coordinate his school schedule so that he could be at Glen Island in New Rochelle for practice each weekday by 4 p.m.

Initially though, surmounting that obstacle just didn’t prove enough. Josh and his partner, Ian Klein, a Harvard-bound senior from Scarsdale High School, embarked on a series of disappointing near-miss second place finishes throughout the year. Recommitting and reconditioning this spring, the boys worked closely with PCRA Head Coach, Guy Monseair, to finally take their place atop the medal podium at states—a sweet Mother’s Day gift of gold for both boys’ mothers.  

“We were determined to keep pushing each day on the water. Knowing that we had this one last race to prove ourselves after four years as junior rowers—it was just our time to persevere and take gold, now or never,” Klein said.

PCRA fielded a team this season of over 130 high school rowers with surprising depth and breadth. They credit their athletes for their exciting success at states, the capstone of their season. PCRA medaled in a broad range of events, from sweep to sculling, in boats both big and small, girls and boys, as well as in every age category from Novice to freshman, JV and varsity.

For a team barely 10 years old, PCRA’s future is already looking like a national powerhouse.