The University of the Fraser Valley rowing program posted some solid results at last Saturday’s Western Canadian University Rowing Championships.
Held at Burnaby Lake and hosted by UBC, the event drew teams from B.C., Alberta and Manitoba.
In the lightweight women’s double, the UFV duo of Arden Holmes and Emily Klootwyk turned in a very good time en route to a fourth-place finish in their heat. Unfortunately, only the top three from each heat advanced to the final, so Holmes and Klootwyk were out of luck despite posting a faster time than the third-place boat in the other heat.
In the lightweight men’s single, UFV’s Mike Moreton – racing in a single for just the second time ever – made it through the heats to the final and placed sixth.
“I was impressed with Mike’s attitude towards this race; he’s in his second year of rowing, and racing the single takes a special kind of mental fortitude,” UFV head coach Liz Chisholm said. “Mike is showing he has that in spades.”
In the final of the varsity open men’s single, Brad Jones placed fifth.
“Brad executed his plan for his race quite well,” Chisholm said. “He was thrown off a bit by hitting a buoy but recovered quickly, and headed into the home stretch with some faster speed than I had been seeing lately.”
The men’s pair of Kyle Krahn and Stephen Wall had a rough go of it in their race – Chisholm believes they had the ability to finish top-three, but some inaccurate steering off the start put them into the water lilies. They recovered to move into fourth place, only to hit a lane buoy in the last 250 metres.
“If they’d had 20 more metres, they would’ve made third,” Chisholm said. “Not the best way to race a course . . . but they showed they have that ability.”
Up next for the Cascades is the Canadian University Rowing Championships, which run Oct. 31 to Nov. 1 in Antigonish, N.S.
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