Radnor Crew Takes Fourth At U.S. Nationals

The smiles weren’t forced clenched-teeth, pressed-lips, make-it-look-good shots. They were genuine. Each one them, coxswain Ben Croop, and rowers JP Aftring, Declan Carbery, Cameron Staines and Jimmy Puckette, couldn’t have been more pleased after taking a team photo.

Yes, the varsity four boys’ crew team placed fourth in a field of six at the U.S. Rowing Youth National Championship in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, last Sunday. But the Red Raiders were among the elite, the best-of-the-best, from tens of thousands of crew teams that began this spring with the even the hope of getting to the nationals.

Radnor did, and had a reason to be pleased. The Red Raiders were one of 17 crews that reached this rare plateau, competing in four races over three days. What’s more is that Radnor was one of a handful of natural high school crews competing, and not a club team, which were comprised of rowers from various schools.

After their final race on Sunday, the five all reflected for a few brief moments in the boat how far they’ve come this year. They were immediately able to look back at a historic season in which they won the Scholastic Rowing Association of America (SRAA) National Championship, and the prestigious the Stotesbury Regatta, two races that previous Radnor teams would have been pleased just to have placed.

“Everyone was pretty fine with fourth at nationals, and we had a hard road up until the final,” said Croop, who plans on rowing at the University of Michigan in the fall. “We were all talking in the boat after we were done in the finals, and we realized we were the second-best high school in the country, since a lot of the teams were clubs.

“Don’t get me wrong, we were going down there to win, there was no doubt about that. But we can accept where we finished. This whole year has been a proving ground that showed what we can do and I can’t think of a better way to leave the program than for what we did this year. The juniors that we have this year that will be seniors next year are really strong athletes. They’re going to bring the team and the program to even higher heights.”

But there was one caveat they could all take—they get a break from each other.

“After the race on Sunday, we were all joking about how sick we were of seeing each other, because we saw each other more than we saw our own families,” Croop said. “But I’m definitely proud of what we all did. We all sort of kicked the idea around now and then that it seems crew is the ultimate team sport. Everyone has to be there. Every year, it seemed, there was one kid that didn’t have the same mindset as everyone else. This year we had a whole team that had one mindset. We had no weak links. No, none at all.”