Oarsome Murray Bridge athletes prepare for the Australian Rowing Championships

This story was contributed by Peter Newell and Glen Dorsey.

Murray Bridge Rowing Club secretary Victoria Seidel has been selected in the state team to represent South Australia in the blue-ribbon event, the Queen’s Cup, for the interstate women’s eight championship.

Seidel, who lives at Goolwa and works at Victor Harbor, normally trains with Goolwa Rowing Club or at Murray Bridge.

This season’s state squad training meant a 3.30am rise to travel to West Lakes for a 5.30am training session, then travel to Victor Harbor for work.

Her dedication and hard work has paid off.

The Queen’s Cup will be contested this Sunday, March 30 at Lake Barrington, Tasmania.

The club’s under 17 squad will compete in a number of events at the championship in the week on March 24.

The young athletes have been preparing for months and have had good lead-up events.

At the state championships Archer Buick teamed up with James Cox from Unley High School to win the under 16 men’s double scull state championship, and Archer finished second in the under 16 men’s single sculls.

Ella Davy and Lillian Hoare finished third in the under 16 women’s double scull championship.

At the March 8 regatta Davy, Hoare, Mackenize Milne, Cianna Watkins and Lillian Hoare finished second in the under 19 women’s coxless quad sculls, 2.4 seconds behind a Torrens a Riverside composite crew.

The crew then added coxswain Ethan Hoare to the boat to record a run-away win in the under 17 women’s coxed quad scull.

Buick competed in the small boat combined event, which has the state’s scullers from the elite to leading school scullers and coxless pairs, competing in heats to determine a final round.

He finished fourth in both his heat and final.

In under 17 men’s single scull, Buick finished a strong second.

At Lake Barrington he will compete in the under 17 men’s single scull and under 17 men’s double scull with Cox again.

Lillian Hoare, Davy, Milne and Watkins will compete in the under 17 women’s double sculls and coxed quad scull, with Ethan Hoare coxswain.

At the end of the week the athletes will swap their Murray Bridge Rowing Club uniforms for school uniforms to compete for school in the Australian School Championships.

Competing for Unity College are Buick, in the schoolboy single sculls, and Milne and Watkins, in the schoolgirl double sculls.

Davy and Lillian Hoare will represent Murray Bridge High School in the schoolgirl double sculls.

The under 17 athletes have not only been busy training, but also assisting with fundraising, selling raffle tickets and seeking sponsors.

The generous support of the local community has made the trip to Tasmania possible and is greatly appreciated by the athletes and their families.

Meanwhile, the commodore and vice commodore of the old Murray Bridge Sailing Club have presented a cheque for $7000 to the Murray Bridge Rowing Club to pay for cabinetry to preserve the latter club’s historic 100-plus years of memorabilia.

The funding will also provide the rowers with an ergo machine for training.

The presentation came after a discussion about the needs of the club, and was made at a March 5 barbecue at the rowing club to send off Murray Bridge’s teams for the nationals in Tasmania.