Cameron, one of John McGlashan College's rowing coxswains gives us an insight of life at Maadi.
Once we arrived in Cambridge we sorted where our gear would go and where everyone was. The next morning we headed down to Lake Karapiro where we were racing and where to rig up the boats, then we set off on our first row on the lake. It was very different to what we were used to as there were no landmarks in the water to show us where abouts we were.
After two days of training as preparation race day came upon us, it started out with weigh-ins, making sure we were the correct weight and officially signed into the race. My first race was the Boys under 17 Coxed Quad which included, Josh Smith, Thomas Benny, Max Gomez and Ben MacDonald. We finished 5th, which sent us to the repechage, where we just missed out on a A or B final. We ended up coming 1st in the C-Final which was still pretty cool.
The 2nd day I had to weigh-in as well with the Boys U15 Coxed Quad which consisted of Will Turner, Will Edwards, Bailey Dowling and Angus Kenny. We finished 1st in our heat with OBHS following closely behind.
On the Thursday we had our semi final which we came 2nd in, closely behind Hamilton Boys.
As Saturday approached us we were feeling really good about our A-final, as we rowed up I was talking to the boys about motivation which got their heads in the game. When we set off the speakers in the boat decided to die on us, which lead to me screaming my head off at the boys so they could hear me throughout the 2km track. As we approached the 500m it was between us and Glendowie College for bronze, so we got our secret weapon into action which resulted in us getting bronze, which was an awesome feeling.
As we rowed up to the podium we saw all our parents and schoolmates clapping and cheering for us, once off the boat I had a spot weigh in and came out good which was lucky, we headed up on the podium and we couldn't wipe the smiles of our faces, it was also very cool knowing we were the first coxed boat to medal at Maadi. Whilst on the podium it was awesome to see our parents whom had traveled a long way to watch us compete, like Angus Kenny’s mum Kath, who travelled all the way from Stewart Island. Also A big thank you to all the parents and coaches for helping us throughout this experience and to Tony Gomez for sorting everything that we needed throughout our time away.
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