CSSRA regatta ready to roll
Ken Campbell is a little worried.
The long-time chairman of the Canadian Secondary Schools Rowing Association Regatta said everything is falling into place nicely — maybe a little too nicely — for this weekend’s 74th edition of the high school rowing championships on Henley Island.
“All the events are the same this year as last. The timing is all the same. There’s been no relevant changes for any of the events,” Campbell said. “It makes it easier but it makes it a littler scarier, too. You don’t get a lot of frantic e-mails or anything.
“Last night I was sitting at home and I didn’t get a single e-mail. Is today or tomorrow just going to be a holy terror? But so far, so good.”
This year’s regatta features 128 schools, 1,757 athletes and 700 entries, down about 70 from last year.
“A lot of that is due to the environmental elements,” said Campbell, who is chairing his 20th regatta. “There are no schools from the Ottawa area or east coast because the east coast just got on the water last weekend and Ottawa may not get on the water until July. They haven’t even trained. They can’t even get to their boat house. The last time I heard the Ottawa boat house had seven feet of water inside.”
About 15 new schools have come on board this year.
“Some of that could be schools amalgamating and becoming a new school in an area. Some of them are smaller schools from the prairies that send a sculler,” the said.
Campbell said a flurry of late entries had to be turned away.
“After our close of entries, we had a bunch of American schools asking. They wanted to try to go for the triple crown,” he said. “It’s a hard deadline. It stops a lot of the gamesmanship.”
Racing begins Friday at 9 a.m.
“We added some extra races Friday because it was a lighter schedule to begin with and the long range forecast for Saturday didn’t look promising, a lot of high winds.” Campbell said. “We took some racing from Saturday and moved it to Friday to get as much done as possible.”
Racing continues Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and concludes with 38 finals Sunday from 8 a.m. to 2:34 p.m.
This will be the third year the finals have started earlier.
“It’s worked out well. The out-of-town schools love it because they can get on the highway and be home at midnight rather than three in the morning,” Campbell said.
Overall, the weather looks decent for the weekend, with the exception of Saturday where high winds could cause some issues.
“It’s the winds we worry about and then if we get any thunder boomers,” Campbell said. “We can row through rain if there’s no wind or electrical activity. We can pretty well manage it because you won’t get the driving rain.”
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