This was our first time competing in Rowing, a new sport introduced at Cargilfield just a couple of weeks ago when Mr Davies from Fettes came to talk to the children about the sport and left us with an erg to practice on!

The Indoor Championships took place at Fettes this year and it was a really exciting event, with children competing from S1 to S6 in Girls and Boys categories. Our squad of 10 rowers had been selected based on only a few training sessions and were competing in the S1 and S2 age groups. We went in to the competition with relatively modest ambitions, to get to know the event, and a target in mind for each rower hoping to beat their personal best. After only 2 weeks, we knew the competition would be stiff, especially in the S2 category where competing schools would have much more experience than our squad.

After a warm-up, the S1 Boys and Girls were first to compete. They had 2 minutes to row as far as they could and the trick was to push themselves, but not overdo the opening minute so that they had power left for the final 30 seconds. Spectators were able to track the progress of their rowers on a screen showing the relative position of the ‘boats’. We were delighted that Cecilia came 1^st and Isla 2^nd in the Girls race and Jamie W came 2^nd in the Boys race.

The S2 races followed with 3 minute races and, whilst we didn’t manage any medals, the children still did themselves very proud with strong positions and personal best distances – Jamie P was particularly impressive, rowing 50m further than he had ever managed in practice, and Archie was a very close 4^th place: exciting!

We hope this squad will be the trail-blazers for rowing at Cargilfield as this is an event we would love to compete in again in the future. Next year we would hope to take part in the relay races in the afternoon as well. In the mean time, there will be the opportunity for further development of indoor rowing at Cargilfield and some divisional competition to give more children a chance to see if this is a sport that can suit them!

Full results: