Marsh's Monsters Claim Regatta Honour

Over 100 boys and girls at the College took to the River Thames on Saturday for the annual Shiplake College Regatta. The pupils were split into mixed crews, featuring boys from Year 9 to 13 and at least one girl.

Each boat was captained by a senior rower, and entered into a knockout competition. There was a huge turnout from friends and family, who gathered on the riverside to cheer on the teams. The SCBCSA provided great support in the form of refreshments and general organisation. They were able to make use of Shiplake’s impressive new marquee.

Head-to-head races over the 500m course provided some exciting encounters, with some teams resorting to unfamiliar tactics in their desperate pursuit of victory. In the first round, winners went through to the main competition while the losers entered the plate.

After successfully navigating their way through the semi finals, Cawthorne’s Captives and Marsh’s Monsters faced off in the grand final. As a prelude to the main event, the ‘Giants’, captained by Phillip Green, won the plate final. 1st VII cox Dom Marsh then successfully steered his team to victory, holding off Henry Cawthorne’s brave crew. Dom was joined in the winning boat by Sunny Pong, Zeb Hjaltun-Rayner, Cosmo Hearnden, Marcus Colao, Matthew Aldridge, Charles Galligan, Alice White and fellow first eight member Harry Berkley.

After the excitement of the Regatta, there was still time for a grand finale as the staff’s best athletes stepped up to race against the 1st VIII. In a tightly contested race, the staff started brightly but faded in the latter stages as the pupils won by a length. A video of the latter stages can be viewed below:

Racing in the new Will Satch boat, fitted with telemetry, the staff competed amongst themselves to achieve the highest power output. Mathematics teacher and former Henley Regatta champion Mr Pete ‘The Mule’ Muhley won the bragging rights but his efforts were not enough to pull the staff to victory.

The 1st VII collected their medals and celebrated the win by cooling several members of staff off in the river. Photos from the Regatta can be viewed below or on our Flickr page.