Now in it’s third year, the Junior Sculling Regatta is still developing its interest and number of entries compared to the Junior Sculling Head that takes place in March. This category was won last year by St. Paul’s Girls’ School, who came through a strong Marlow crew in the second half of the race. The entries this year feature lots of up-and-coming clubs so this will hopefully be a brilliant event to encourage such crews in the absence of the consistent big names such as Henley.
It looks like this weekend could make for a very exciting matchup between Marlow and Sir William Perkins, who raced the Ch4x to finish in 3rd & 4th at School’s Head and 5th & 6th at the Junior Sculling Head respectively. So far this season, Marlow have maintained the edge on SWPS, but only 6 seconds separated the crews at the Scullery in March, so it really looks to be all to play for. However, top sculler Emily Keen will be absent this weekend as she competes for the GB team at the Munich International Regatta, so SWPS will really have their work cut out to keep close to their rivals.
Bedford Modern School look to be the next fastest crew based on the results at SHORR, where they finished a respectable 7th; an improvement on a lower placing at Hampton Head. However, with the majority of clubs entering eights at School’s Head, they were over a minute slower than the likes of Marlow, so there looks like there could be quite a lot of disparity between the crews.
Bedford Modern may find they are similar in speed to Star Club, who didn’t race at SHORR but did race at the Junior Sculling Head, where they finished joint 15th. Star Club finished 40 seconds behind Marlow at the Scullery, so if the margins are comparable, they might be faster than the BMS crew.
At the Scullery, moving down the rankings, The Kings School Worcester, Kingston Grammar School, Sir William Borlase and Bryanston School all finished in 21st to 27th position within a 20 second margin of each other, so whilst they might not be up there with the faster crews, we can look forwarded to close racing between them over this shorter distance.
Prediction:
- Marlow
- Sir William Perkins
- Star Club
RockOver
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