Club Nationals 2016 was held in Bethel, Ohio on the beautiful Lake Harsha. Except for a quick thunderstorm that resulted in a few races being cancelled, it was near perfect racing conditions all weekend. With over 2,500 entries over the 5 days of racing, the event went off without a hitch. Club Nationals creates such competitive summer racing as some of the best junior and collegiate rowers will spend the summer rowing at clubs across the country. It is not uncommon for some of these clubs to be “invite only” which only allows the best athletes to join. Brian Ebke, the coach of the USRowing High Performance Junior Girls Camp put together boats of some of the fastest junior rowers in the country who were invited to Connecticut to train for the summer. This proved to be a successful endeavour as they finished with gold in the Under 17 girls 8+. “It was a great opportunity to work with this level of athlete this summer. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that some of these girls will go onto be great collegiate athletes or even future national team athletes”

Another highlight of the event was watching the teams slug it out for the Colgan Cup points trophy which will be returning to Philadelphia with Vesper Boat Club who beat out NYAC by 9 points to keep possession of the trophy for another year.

Aside from fast racing, it was inspiring for us to see so many crews utilizing our Shoeplate Pro QuickRelease. The CRI crew was there with 3 full trailers of boats all outfitted with BAT Logic and they have been enjoying the benefits of a full club fitout where every member can have their own shoes. You can read more about it in our clubs section. Our vendor tent was a hotbed of activity when 2 junior rowers from Vesper challenged each other to a 2k. Both set PRs on their 2k using the ErgAdaptor – 13 world records and 2 PR’s means the talk stops when the splits drop!

It was also announced that the 2017 club nationals will return to Lake Harsha and we are looking forward to returning again to such a great venue – see you there in 2017!