One of the highlights of our year is the Annual Indoor Rowing Champs which provides all our rowers with the opportunity to represent their schools in an indoor rowing competition. And indeed they did – rather brilliantly!

Wednesday 29th January saw our first indoor rowing event for Mersey Youth Rowing. This took place at Cardinal Heenan School in Liverpool. We were delighted to welcome our five schools plus three other schools joined in the fun. It was a fantastic first event with about 75 young rowers taking part. Well done to all that helped make this a sound, enjoyable event.

Twenty four hours later Warrington Youth Rowing held its third event, this year at Birchwood High School Sports Hall.

All but one of our nine schools took part and they were joined by another six schools making it a fantastic event! About 275 youngsters showed off their rowing skills in both individual and relay events – combining hard work and lots of fun, as well as making new friends.

Teamwork!

We can’t run events like this for our young people without the help of lots of volunteers.

The team on the day included our trustees, our coaches, a gang from The Grange School, the usual willing tribe of helpers, past and present, from Warrington Rowing Club, and Nick Hubble from British Rowing who drove up for the day to help… way beyond the call of duty for a rowing nut that does so much already for our sport!

Together, everyone made sure that all aspects of the day were covered.

In all, twenty two schools and nearly 400 young rowers, all new to the sport, took part and had a great day. It’s really rather humbling to see what a positive difference our sport has on these young people who demonstrate brilliant determination, teamwork and resilience.

We’ve tried to cram as much of the Indoor Rowing Champs day as possible into this short two minute video! Enjoy!

Very well done and thanks to all!

The Christmas Holiday is on the near horizon and it has been another eventful half term.  The Warrington Schools have settled into the winter routine, which sadly means that the gym at WRC is being very heavily used and Mrs Mersey is being left alone to rest on her bed. There are some impressive young athletes coming through and they are all working hard in the gym. From the evidence we have seen, WYR will be sending a very strong team to The National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships (NJIRC) in February.  Let’s hope we can harvest a few medals to go with the ones from previous years.

I am pleased with the way everybody in Liverpool has rolled up their sleeves and is making the most of a bad job. This half term has been a challenge and next half term will continue to be so. The schools have reacted well and have found areas that we can use to run indoor rowing sessions. As in Warrington there are some talented young athletes emerging and some of the scores are very impressive. MYR should be in a good position to send a strong team for their first visit to NJIRC and let’s hope they can get onto the podium. I would like to thank our coaches in Liverpool as they are doing a great job. The hassle they have picking up the rowing machines is way beyond the job description, but they get on with it and then use their own cars to transport the machines to the schools. This is all to ensure the scheme keeps moving forward, so thanks Paul, Sam and Jess (I know it’s a pain in the sitting area as I do it sometimes!).

I do keep referring to NJIRC and for those of you that have not been it is an incredible experience for the youngsters. It will be held at the Copper Box Arena again this year and as you may remember this is one of the iconic venues for the 2012 Olympics. The date is Friday 28^th February and the plan is for the MYR crew to leave Lime Street at 7.00am and WYR to leave Bank Quay at 7.20am. Both trains arrive at Euston at 9.03 and 9.06. We will then walk to St Pancras and catch another train, arriving on site just after 10am. After a full day’s racing we will return to St Pancras and find somewhere to eat (probably McDonalds). Trains arrive back at Lime Street at 20.20 and Bank Quay at 19.49. For each school that has a pupil selected for NJIRC, we require a member of staff to accompany them so please be thinking about the date. We will pay all rail fares, competition fees, kit and evening meal.

As you can imagine the NJIRC trip is a huge expense and it will cost us the best part of £3.5k. It is though, an important part of what we do and as such we hold a major fundraising dinner to pay for the trip. This year’s event was in early November and was once again a fantastic event. The event consists of a four course meal with a different wine to accompany each dish.  This year we were joined by over 100 guests, including Mark Davies, Chair of British Rowing and I am pleased to report that all our guests were very generous with their support. Next year’s event is provisionally booked for 13^th November 2020 and your support would be greatly appreciated, more details later in the year. The trip in February has also benefited from the direct support of The Henley Stewards’ Charitable Trust and we thank them for their continued support.

To qualify for the NJIRC trip our youngsters have to be selected and we use our own indoor competitions to do this.

The Liverpool Competition is going to be held on Wednesday 29^th January at Cardinal Heenan. The plan at present is to run 2 sessions, one for the girls and one for the boys, but more details will be sent through by Jo Murray.

The Warrington Competition (which will also double up as The Cheshire School Games) will be held at Birchwood School Sports Hall on Thursday 30^th January. Again there will be 2 main sessions and schools can decide if they want to do morning or afternoon. Penny Moorfield will be sending through details.

These events are going ahead with help from Concept Rowing Machines and Dan Heatherington of British Rowing.

In Liverpool we recently held our first capsize drill and the help of Nicky Rea and De La Salle was greatly appreciated. The drill gives our youngsters a taste of what might happen should their boat capsize; it teaches them to stay with their boat and use it as a floatation device. During this exercise we also test the swimming ability of our athletes. Interestingly the standard of swimming in Liverpool was significantly higher than in Warrington. Next year our capsize drills will be in the week after our Welcome Evenings, in order to find any children that are scared of water before we get to deep into the programme.

I am in communication with Liverpool John Moores University as they are hoping to conduct a study and evaluation of our work. It does though look like their project will now not start till the next academic year. This has the potential to be a very valuable piece of work and I hope the paper work jungle will be sorted by September enabling the project to start.

In November, Ben and I were invited to speak at The River and Rowing Museum Conference on Rowing Futures. It was a very interesting experience and we were speaking alongside London Youth Rowing and Fulham Reach, we work closely with these London based organisations and our aims are very similar. We highlighted our work and were genuinely taken aback by the emotional and enthusiastic response we got to our presentation. Whilst we were in Henley we took the opportunity to catch up with The Henley Stewards’ Charitable Trust. As you are probably aware we are funded primarily by this organisation and we had a very positive meeting with them. The Trust is very keen for us to keep going and move forward, possibly looking at more sites in the future.

Please feel free to come and visit us, we are always happy to welcome guests; we might even get you in a boat!

Richard Sinnott

Sadly we are still in the gym for the majority of our sessions. We had a brief respite when the summer visited February but it soon ran off, thinking better of its daring show. Much of our work has been on general fitness and our young rowers have been training hard doing a lot of circuit training.

Since our own competition at The Halliwell Jones some of our athletes have been on duty, racing in Northwich and or London. The Cheshire School Sports Indoor Rowing Competition took place in Northwich. Three of our schools took part, Birchwood, Culcheth and Sir Thomas Boteler. The majority of our teams were made up of rowers that had been involved with WYR and they performed very well indeed. A lot of the other schools that attended had rowers in their teams that are training with local rowing clubs and their superior fitness and technique did show in certain events. Never the less our youngsters rolled up their sleeves and won several events. This event needs supporting but it fell badly, with the London trip in the same week. Understandably staff pressures got the better of some schools.  In an effort to help Warrington Youth Rowing have offered to take over the running of this event and combine it with our own competition. (30th January 2020 Birchwood).  Hopefully we will be able to confirm this idea soon.

Friday 15^th March finds The Warrington Youth Rowing Team waiting, at Bank Quay Station for a train to London and The National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships. The 6.20am service got us into Euston at 8.30am and from there we walked to St Pancras to catch another train to Stratford and the Copper Box Arena. We eventually established base camp, just after 10am and the youngsters slowly started to bond, breaking down any school barriers. I have to say the school leads were great, getting stuck in with the group, regardless of the origin of the children. It was at this stage that the team came together and we were now Team Warrington, a big step for the athletes. The NJIRC is so big that there are 4 race areas, each with some 30 rowing machines. With some events having about 200 competitors there are effectively 6 or 7 groups or heats to race before a winner can be declared.

Our first race was the year 8 boys and our lads were split up into different heats. The five lads did very well with Alfie and Tom both ending up in the top 10 of the overall results. This event attracted 194 entries.

The year 8 girls were next in the arena and again they were a great credit. Special mention must go to Amy, who must be one of the most determined athletes I have ever worked with. She managed to get into the top 10 when the results surfaced. This was the biggest event with 196 entries.

Our two year 9 boys now took to the race floor and again performed beyond expectations. Jonah came in a creditable 17^th and Michael finished 4^th the worst place of all.  There were 185 entries in this event.

The relays were next up and we entered a year 8 boys and girls team. Both teams rowed themselves into the ground with the boys finishing 12 out of 84. The girls won their heat and had high hopes of a medal but sadly they finished 5^th out of 72 teams. What we didn’t realise at the time was that the relays were open to children older than year 8, a lesson learnt for next year!

Our last event was the year 10 girls. Ellie had picked up a bronze medal last year, as a year 9 and was keen to add to her collection. Her pal Ifi was also in this event and they train together at Warrington Rowing Club. The girl’s often race together, so there is a healthy rivalry that sits along side their great friendship. This event showed us the two sides of competitive sport. Elle upped her game and came home with a fantastic silver medal. Ifi missed the bronze by 3 metres, needless to say she was absolutely devastated and it took her a good 2 hours to regain her composure. She did and it has made her more determined never to be 4^th again.

The journey home began via a pit stop at McDonalds and the Warrington Team arrived back at Bank Quay just after 8.30pm.

This event is a great shop window for Warrington Youth Rowing and it is certainly in our plans to repeat the exercise next year. It may well be the biggest sporting event these youngsters ever take part in, it should provide them with lasting memories and I hope new friends.

I must thank lots of people for making it happen. The School’s and the leads that travelled. Namely Paula, Nat, Kerry, Ryan, Scott, Mark and Paul our WYR coach. We must also remember the folk that got together last year at Mere Court Hotel for our fundraising dinner; they will be pleased that their hangovers provided so much enjoyment!

Monday was The Scullery, one of the biggest rowing events in GB. It takes place on Dorney Lake, the home of 2012 Olympics. Warrington Rowing Club entered 6 crews (out of 550). A number of these boats contained WYR athletes and I am sure they will have retuned with a tale or two to tell.

Monday was also the day that Ben and I had a face too face meeting with Henley Stewards Charitable Trust. The meeting was also at Dorney Lake and it was very helpful to be able to illustrate our presentation with some of our WYR graduates actually taking part in this huge event. This is the organisation that generously sponsors us and makes a lot of things happen. We spent the best part of 90 minutes talking about our project and the fantastic schools that we deal with. It is a privilege to be dealing with such a wonderful and prestigious organisation that is managed by people dedicated to sport and the well being of youngsters.

The weather is slowly improving and there is still plenty of room in the coaching launches for any members of school hierarchy to come and witness our programme. The Chair of British Rowing is coming on Friday March 29^th to check us out, I am sure he would like to meet any Heads that would be available?

Kind regards

Richard

WYR

The New Year has seen us working in the gym at Warrington Rowing Club for two reasons. Firstly it’s been very cold and secondly it has been an opportunity for the rowers to prepare for our Indoor Competition. Paul, the School Leads and myself have worked the children very hard. In every session they completed their test distance and also did a relay practice. We did intersperse the hard work with games such as Hangman, testing their knowledge of rowing terms and spelling of said terms! As we got closer to our competition the results got better and better, indeed in the last couple of weeks before the event it was almost the norm for new PB’s to be chalked up.

As for the competition it was a memorable day. The volunteers that helped out have all said how impressed they were with our/your youngsters. In fact I have not received a negative comment from them about the rowers, quite remarkable for 30 volunteers and nearly 200 pupils. A huge thanks to all the volunteers, especially Ralph Johnson (Birchwood), Nick Hubble (Peterborough Rowing Club) and Dan Heatherington from British Rowing.

On the day of the competition Mother Nature decided to intervene and remind us that she is still to be respected. It was probably the worst day of the winter so far for bad weather. Sadly this meant that we lost a couple of schools, with Culcheth being the biggest loss as well as the team from Woolston Brook. The army of volunteers started to arrive at 7am to setup the event, with 30 rowing machines being put together, wired up and then fenced off.  At 9.00am the volunteers raced to test the machines, race systems and computers.

The venue, The Halliwell Jones Stadium, is a great attraction in itself and I would be delighted to receive feedback from you as to the suitability of the stadium. There were lots of positives but negatives as well, temperature certainly being a problem. Please let us have your thoughts as we are already planning 2020 and we want to be bigger and better. We did try and put together other things for the children to do but again I am not sure how much use this was, comments please.

The results have been emailed to the schools and you will see there are some great results. This leads us to the National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships (NJIRC) to be held at The Copper Box, Olympic Park, London.  One of the objects of our event was to select a Warrington team for NJIRC. We would like to invite the following athletes and a School Lead per school to join our team on Friday 15^th March. (Leaving Bank Quay at 6.22am returning 8.34pm).

Alfie Fairhill and Charie Lears         Cardinal Newman

Evan Wray and Amy Groves            Birchwood

Tom Gilmore                                      S T Boteler

Ryan Edwards and Emily Sankey    Bridgewater

Amelia North and Poppy Wild         Penketh

Grace Bain                                          Padgate

This is not the final team but I am happy to get things moving for the above. I do hope they will all be able to join us, it is an amazing event. We will cover the cost of the train and connection in London, the competition entry fee, and a burger type meal at teatime on the way home. As per last year could we ask for a £50 (payable to Warrington Youth Rowing) contribution per athlete to help spread the cost of the event, train tickets alone will be £850!

There is another indoor rowing event on the horizon; it takes place on Tuesday 12 March at The Memorial Hall in Northwich. This event is part of The School Games and is being promoted in Warrington by Penny Moorfield, School Games Organiser. Penny was a great help with our event and she enabled us to hire a van to collect and return the rowing machines from Nottingham. Penny also provided the medals for our competition. It would be a nice way to pay her back if we could support this event.

Hopefully we have seen the worst of winter (fingers crossed it’s better than last year) and we can start getting back to the business of rowing on The Mersey. We are not far from half way through the school year and the next big competition is Tuesday 2^nd July. Plenty of room in the coaching launches for School Heads to come and have a look at our work and how good your pupils are.

Kind regards

Richard and all at WYR