These two days led wonderfully onto NJIRC – the National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships at The Copper Box in London. 26 of our children (from both Warrington and Mersey) got the early train to London to use their newly learned indoor rowing skill to compete at a national level. A great experience for all with some brilliant results – most notably in the Year 8 Boys category with Mersey’s Kevin Dos Santos coming in a fantastic third place!
This year also saw our young people compete for their schools in our annual indoor rowing championships (held at Birchwood High School Sports Hall for Warrington Youth Rowing and Cardinal Heenan School for Mersey Youth Rowing). In total, twenty two schools and nearly 400 young rowers took part and had a great time!
Unfortunately the Watersports Centre had to close shortly after we started to be refurbished. This has been a dent in our plans but not a fatal blow, our hardworking coaches now take a bank of ergs to our partner schools which include North Liverpool Academy, De La Salle, Cardinal Heenan, Archbishop Beck and St Hildas. This was the case until the Watersports Centre in Liverpool reopened in March.
Warrington saw St Gregs Catholic High School join the scheme, taking our total to 9 schools.There was though a bigger change: we opened a new site in Liverpool. This has become Mersey Youth Rowing, hosted by Mersey Rowing Club and operating from Liverpool Watersports Centre.
Once again the spring weather enabled us to get back on the river and the pupils went into training for the summer regatta.The 2019 regatta had a new trophy, it was presented in memory of Roger Chicken and it was for the best school in that particular year. Birchwood High School were the first winners. The regatta was a great success and again there were a large number of spectators watching their first rowing event.
This year NJIRC had moved to the Copper Box in the Olympic Park and the new venue really moved the competition on. Ellie Kadir managed to upgrade her bronze medal from 2018 to a silver in 2019.
Our Indoor Competition was going to be a move on from the previous year. We decided to use The Halliwell Jones Stadium, home of The Warrington Wolves. In theory it was a brilliant idea and it did work well but we didn’t bank on it being the coldest day of the year. We were using the corridor area under the grandstands and there was no heating. In the end well over 200 youngsters took part even though a couple of schools missed out due to poor weather conditions. It did though enable us to select another strong team for NJIRC.
This year saw a number of changes. We changed our age range to year 8, for a number of reasons. Pressures of the Education System meant that there was a reluctance for schools to release pupils as they got nearer to their GCSE Exams. Other factors weighed in, mainly linked to logistics but it was generally agreed that year 8 would be the way forward. There were changes on the coaching front, Phil had moved on and was replaced by Paul. We also started to bring in more part time coaches to cover the busy timetable of rowing sessions.
During the summer holidays of 2018 WYR started the process of getting as many school leads as possible qualified as British Rowing Coaches and Launch Drivers. Six members of staff took up this challenge and are now fully qualified, this gives us greater strength of depth with our coaching team. Some of these coaches are now confident enough to act as one of the coaches for their school session.
As well as racing for medals the youngsters were aiming to get selected to be part of the Warrington Team at the National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships in London. This is a huge event, one of the biggest in the world and is staged by our good friends at London Youth Rowing. The WYR team travelled by train to London and had an amazing day, racing hard and making new friends. Ellie Kadir of Culcheth High School even made the medal podium with a fantastic Bronze Medal, a first for WYR.
