Washington-Lee High School Crew

Due to inclement weather we have decided to cancel the 2012 Triathlon.

Wreath Sales - we are bringing back our popular wreath sales, lead by Jennifer DeGross - 703-875-2241.

W-L Crew is selling 25" wreaths for local delivery and 22" wreaths for direct shipment. These lovely wreaths can be shipped to any location in the US. Orders must be received by November 10th. Wreaths will be delivered between December 4 and 11th.

Here are the Order forms.

• Wreath order form PDF
• Wreath shipping form MS Word - for orders being shipped

To place an order please submit an order form. For those orders being shipped please also submitt a shipping form to Jennifer DeGross

Please help support your local rower and the team in general with your order.

Washington-Lee Crew will be holding open houses every Saturday in October for ALL students attending W-L or 8th Graders who's base school is W-L. We would like to welcome you to our boathouse, give you a tour, tell you more about our program and give you a chance to try rowing fist hand.

All students are welcome no matter what grade or experience. You should wear appropriate close to row, shorts and t-shirt or sweat shirt and pants, weather permitting.

Dates: October - 1st, 15th, 22nd and 29th

Time: 1st, 22nd and 29th - 9am-11am
15th - Noon to 2pm

Potomac Boat Club - 3530 Water Street, Washington, DC 20007 - Directions

There is some free street parking in front of the boathouse but you should be prepared to part on the street. There are some quarter(change operated machines and ones that take credit/debit cards).

If you have any questions you can contact Derek Parsons, Men's Head Coach at crewcoach@hotmail.com 703-577-8254 or Kathleen McNamee, Girls Head Coach at kayak.kat@gmail.com

Please join The Washington Crew Alumni and Friends and the Washington-Lee Crew Boosters for an afternoon of reconnecting with the W-L Crew family, food and rowing if you wish.

October 8th at Potomac Boat Club, 11am-3pm

Along with the festivities we will be dedicating our two new Eights, the "Jan Nieudorp, Class of 1960" and the "Helen J"

We're still here and we want to see you again.

A 10$ donation is welcomed from all attendees.

1962 Varsity Eight

On May 31, 2011 after a long and very difficult 25 year struggle with Multiple Sclerosis, Brian O’Donnell died peacefully at Marin Convalescent and Rehabilitation Hospital in Tiburon, California. Brian was in the company of his family during his last days.

He was an outstanding athlete in high school with one state championship as a wrestler and the winner of two national championships as an oarsman for the Potomac Boat Club in an eight-oared shell; he considered 5 seat in the ‘engine room’ home.  He also rowed at the Royal Henley Regatta in Henley, England in the summer of 1962.  Brian rowed for the legendary Coach Charlie Butt whom he greatly respected and admired.  Brian’s fond memories of his time with W&L Crew remained a big part of his life and of those around him, as he never missed a chance to share his memories, numerous triumphs, hard work, and the tremendous camaraderie he enjoyed with his coach and teammates. There is no doubt that his rowing memories were some of his most treasured.

Full Obituary can be found here

I would like to congratulate the 2011 team award winners.

MVP Chris Lent and Tessa Van Grack
Most Improved - Abin Dahal and Taylor Leonard
Coaches Award - Sean Magner and Taylor Brandt

Chris Lent - All-Met Honorable Mention

Congratulations to the Boy's Junior Eight. 2011 saw them win the VASRA Championship and placed 3rd at SRAA Nationals.

Everyone will be gathering this Saturday at W-L for the 8th Annual W-L Crew Triathlon. The event starts with a 4k erg and moves directly into a 2 mile run (2 laps around the school block and once around the track) all on one clock. Them the athletes move to bench rows. They have a maximum of 2 min to pull as many as they can. Each bench pull lowers the athletes total erg/run time by 3 seconds. Lowest time wins.

Jeff Lucier decided not to return this year. Our new head coach will be Kathleen McNamee. Kathleen has served the past two seasons as an assistant varsity coach. She is currently teaching Biology at W-L as well. We are very excited to have her move up and I know the kids are looking forward to seeing her in action this coming season.

Bill Engeman USRowing 2010 Man of the Year

The US Rowing Man of the Year Award is given in recognition of outstanding contributions to men's rowing and/or to an outstanding man in rowing. This year's recipient is Bill Engeman. Considered the father of rowing in Cincinnati, Engeman began rowing at Washington-Lee High School in 1956. He rowed at Brown University from 1957-1961 and was captain of the first Brown University varsity crew, eventually becoming the first oarsman to be inducted into Brown's Athletic Hall of Fame. When Cincinnati developed a rowable lake at East Fork State Park in 1982, Engeman made it his lifelong passion to bring the sport to the city. He developed the many rowing programs, boathouses and facilities with his friends and fellow Cincinnati sports lovers. His work promoting the sport through 15 National Collegiate Rowing Championships was recognized in 1998 when he was admitted as a patron into the National Rowing Hall of Fame. Engeman has spent nearly 30 years as a trustee for the National Rowing Foundation. Over the past couple of years, Engeman has dedicated his time to helping the Iraqi Rowing Federation and its athletes. Engeman organized a coaching trip to Iraq earlier this year and was the driving force in bringing the Iraq National Team to the United States for a training and cultural exchange trip this past fall.

Link to video

The Washington-Lee Crew Family would like to wish Andy Barr '46 a huge Happy Birthday. Andy is as a W-L Alumni and huge supporter of the W-L community and especially W-L Crew. But most notable is Andy is a decorated Korean War hero, where became a recipient of two Silver Stars and one Bronze Star. We wish him a very joyful birthday and thank you for all you have done for your community and Country.

All students are welcome to attend an interest/organizational meeting for the crew. We will be meeting Tuesday Nov. 9th right after school.

• Girls - Room 2116
• Boys- Room 2213

Please plan to join us to hear about our plans for the 2011 season. We will go over our winter conditioning program and the 2011 season.

Any student interested in learning more about our program is welcome. All returning rowers are expected to be there. If you have plans already you will be let go as soon as the basic information is given out. The meeting won’t take long so I hope everyone is able to make it.

Schedule notes:

• Winter conditioning starts Nov. 15th
• Crew Season starts February 21st, 2011

W-L Crew Fall Open Houses are open to any student at Washington-Lee HS. No experience necessary. Don't be intimidated if you haven't done it before. W-L Crew has new rowers from all classes every year. Last season we had athletes on both the men's and women's side of the program join as seniors and compete on our top boats. We welcome everyone to participate. There is no requirement to join the team. Just come down and try it out. You won't know what your missing until you do.

We encourage all the parents to come down and hang around and learn about our program and how important our boosters organization is.

Dates and times:

• Every Saturday in October, 10am to Noon
• October 9th will be 9am to 11am

The address of our boathouse is 3530 Water Street, Washington DC 20007 - Directions
Parking is available on Water Street by meter(Bring quarters) or parking garage a couple blocks away from the boathouse, but also on Water Street.

Questions should be directed to Derek Parsons, Head Coach at crewcoach@hotmail.com

This summer Washington-Lee Crew Alumni continued to make news at the Royal Henley Regatta and USRowing Club Nationals. Two alumni Apollo Nguyen '87(cox) and Paul Holland '97(7 seat) help take Potomac Boat Club to the Semi-Finals in the Themes Cup at Henley.

New alumni Patrick Lacey '10 won two bronze medals rowing for Potomac Boat Club's Junior Sculling Program at USRowing Club Nationals. Patrick won his bronze medals in the Junior A Single and as stroke of the the Junior Quad. Patrick will be taking his talents to UC San Diego in the Fall.

We would like to congratulate individual achievement and awards for the 2010 season:

Patrick Lacey - 1st Team All-Met Athlete Boys Rowing
Caitlin Macnamara - Honorable Mention All-Met Athlete Girls Rowing

Team Awards - Boys
MVP - Will Dickinson
Most Improved - Ian Feeney
Coaches Award - Tom Miotke
Coaches Award - Chris Stephens

Team Award - Girls
MVP - Caitlin Macnamara
Most Improved - Paige Handcock
Coaches Award - Brenna Nelson

W-L Crew Alumni continue to make waves after graduation. This year at 2010 NCAA Championship saw senior Nora Phillips '06 (2 seat) helped the V8 of UVA to 2nd place and the Team Trophy and Jane Roberts '08 helped cox the V4 of Wisconsin to a 3rd Place finish. Scott Herring '05 helped Temple to a 3rd place finish in the JV8 final at the 2010 Dad Vail. Junior Nick Birasa '07 (stroke) is leading Dartmouth's 2V. David Kahan '08 (3 seat)continues to help Yale's lightweight program this year on their 2V to 2nd place at the EARC Eastern Sprints. Last but not least Dakota Springston '09 (5 seat) finished up his season at Mary Washington helping their program to a strong finish this year. Although not an alumni Martin Eiermann (5 seat), exchange student in '04 and member of the W-L Crew '04 State and Stotesbury Champion Lightweight Eight, is a senior at Harvard helping their Varsity Lightweight Eight. So far this year Harvard place 2nd to Princeton at the EARC Eastern Sprints. Martin along with Nick are heading into this weekends IRA.

This year W-L Crew only sent a boys junior eight up to Saratoga Springs, NY to compete at the SRAA Nationals. Since our Men's V8, the only other boat to qualify for Nationals, declined to attend we reconfigured our Men's 2V with one seat change from the V8(one senior was removed from the 2V lineup) to form the new lineup for Nationals. With 3 days of practice before traveling we were nervous about our chances. The boys advanced to the semi-finals placing 2nd in their heat(10th overall by time). The following day came the semi-finals where they rose to occasion by placing 3rd(6th overall by time) to advance to the final. Later that day came the final where they ended up taking 5th to a very strong field which is a good sign for this group since the lineup consisted of 7 sophomores, 1 junior and 1 freshman. Missing from the picture is Jim Owen '62 who was the other coach to travel up with us but is not shown because he was taking this picture.

The 84th Stotesbury Cup Regatta was held this past weekend. We took up 5 eights, Boys and Girls Varsity and 2nd Varsity Eights and the Girls Freshman. The Boys 2V was the only boat to advance out of the time trials placing 10th (needed top 12). They then placed a strong 5th place in their semi final, but needed top 3 to advance to the final. The other notable happening was W-L's Novice Men's coach presenting the Charlie Butt Trophy for the Boy's Jr. Eights to St. Joe's Prep during the finals on Saturday. We'd also like to thank all the parents for a great trip due to all their help and support for feeding us, chaperoning at the hotel and continued and unwavering support for our program. Without your help it wouldn't be possible.

Jim Owen, '62 presenting the Charlie Butt Trophy for the Boys Jr. Eight to St. Joe's Prep

So we only got half way through the VASRA Championship this weekend due to high winds postponing the finals. From stiff head winds all day and the starting platform being damaged and requiring floating starts, the regatta staff and officials pushed through to at least get the heats completed before canceling racing on Saturday. The finals of the VSRC have been rescheduled for May 22nd. The Men's V8 and 2V will rowing in finals. The Women's V8 will be racing the petite final while the Women's 2V missed the final by 0.3 seconds.

This weekend will be the 84th Stotesbury Cup Regatta in Philadelphia PA. W-L Crew will have 5 eights in the regatta

Friday Time-Trial times
Girls Freshman Eight 8:41 AM
Boys 2nd Eight 1:10 PM
Girls 2nd Eight 1:24 PM
Boys 1st Eight 3:12 PM
Girls 1st Eight 3:31 PM

Friday, May 14th  schedule
Saturday, May 15th schedule
Stotesbury Website

The VASRA Championships are this weekend. Our Boys and Girls 1st and 2nd Eights will be participating. The schedule for the event has been posted.

The schedule for ths weekends Ted Phoenix - Lower Boat Championship has been released. Bus for the athletes leave at 5:30am from the school.

The schedule for the Charlie Butt Regatta. Racing starts at 9am.

We will be traveling a short distance for the 2nd time to the Occoquan for the Smokey Jacobs Regatta. The schedule has been posted.

For the first time in many years the main story from St. Andrews isn't the weather. We had a cool and gusty start but a warm and sunny finish to this past Saturday's event. A strong showing from all boats. The best showing was from the women's novices placing 2nd in both events. The results for the Men's V8 wasn't updated but the corrected results are as follows

1-STA 4:32.72. 2-Chaminade 4:33.63. 3-SAS 4:36.64. 4-Bonner 4:39.25. 5-W-L 4:442.16. 6-TCW 4:59.1

The team would like to thank the Washington-Lee administration for taking time during Spring Break to come and observe a practice and to see our athletes in action. From L to R, Kathleen McNamee - Women's Asst. Coach, Mr. Robertson - Principal and Ms. Callaway - Director of Student Activities

Crew families are making news. Caroline Birasa, sister of Nick Birasa '07 was named a National Achievement Scholarship winner and will receive a $2,500 scholarship.

To qualify for the award, students requested consideration when they took the 2008 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test as high school juniors. To continue in the competition, students had to meet additional requirements which included high academic performance and a recommendation by an official of their high school.

The National Achievement Scholarship Program is a privately-financed academic competition established in 1964 specifically to honor scholastically talented Black American youth, and to provide scholarships to a substantial number of the most outstanding participants in each annual competition.

The team will be traveling to St. Andrews this coming Saturday. The buses will be leaving at 7am from the school. The trip is about 2.5 hours. The schedule has been posted.

We will be racing TC Williams this Saturday starting at 7:30am.

W-L Crew competed Saturday in our first regatta of the season against Whitman and Wilson High Schools. It was a strong showing by the whole team with the Men's Varsity standing out by winning all 3 races. Our next competition will be against TC Williams this coming Saturday. Schedule/Results

For all the kids and Boosters

When: This Saturday, March 6, 2010
Time: 7:45 - 6pm - 1st shift from 7:45 - 1pm / 2nd shift from 1pm to 6pm
Where: Arlington Traditional School (behind the McDonalds at George Mason and Wilson Blvd