On a wet and wintry Friday morning, the LDE Rowing Team of 12 learners in Year 9, 10, 12 and 13 travelled to compete at the National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships run by London Youth Rowing at the Copper Box Arena on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, London.  
 
This was the first time the event had been held physically since the pandemic and the first time ever at 2 locations in the UK- London and Leeds. Team Captain Maryam led the Year 9 Girls Team and Samson of Year 13 was Captain for the Boys Team with the team supported by Priscilla and Head of Year 13 and Coach, Jonny. 
 
The Team checked in and the Year 12 and Year 13 boys warmed up and made their way to their lanes for their Individual races over 2000 meters on indoor rowing ergometers. The Team Captain led by example and finished in an amazing 7th place with a time of 7.49.5, closely followed by Matas in 8th and David in 11th. 

Following on from the boys’ individual races it was the Year 9 girls turn with the Captain, Maryam, again leading from the front in her lane and winning her A race with an incredible distance of 1014m in 4 minutes and finishing 6th with 5 Great Britain and Club rowers ahead of her. Teammate Flora was not too far behind finishing in 30th with 957m for 4 minutes.  

Later in the day the LDE UTC rowers competed as a team in the Boys relay with Samson, Kristiyan, David, Muzammil, Matas, Kaloyan, Kymani and Jericho. This was a timed event with each team trying to row the maximum meters in 16 minutes 19 seconds the current time for the Oxford/Cambridge Boast race and the Boys team finished a credible 10th place overall with 4606 metres.  

This was closely followed by the Year 9 girls relay team of Maryam, Flora, Eva and Eleni, who finished in 6th place in the Sprint Relay of 2112 meters, the distance of the Henley Regatta. The girls finished their A race in 2nd place and the top 30 overall in the country.

‘What is even more remarkable and equally inspiring is that none of the team had more than a month’s previous race training and that they did so well against highly experienced rowers from either the Great Britain team, Rowing clubs or Private schools with years of training,’ Jonny, Head of Year and Rowing coach.

We aim to further establish the Rowing Club at LDE UTC with two training session per week water-based sessions in the summer term with the team focusing on gaining experience and a solid training base and competing in races with the aim of returning to NJIIC 24 and to go even better and place even higher.