OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (April 19, 2025) - The Rollins men were able to bring home hardware in the two events they entered. The regatta started on Friday with time trials for all the events. The purpose of this is to seed the races. After the time trials, the Rollins Varsity 4 had posted the second fastest time and the Novice 4, the third fastest time. This put them into middle lanes in their semis and after each boat won their semi-final race, great lanes for the grand finals. When the puddles faded the Rollins Varsity 4 placed second out of the 24 boat field and the Novice 4 were SIRA Champions.
The novice 4 (
Claire Opal-Levine,
Dylan Drew,
Devlin Beaubouef,
Arturs Bergs,
Enrique Mediato Diaz) started their grand final race the same way they have all season. They were first off the line and planned on keeping that spot from start to finish. As they took off, Embry Riddle was glued to Rollins and was not letting them get away. Rollins maintained a three quarter boat lead through the 1600m mark. At that point Embry Riddle showed they were not giving up and shrank the three quarter boat lead to a half boat lead. Rollins countered this move and keep that distance through the finish beating second place Embry Riddle by three seconds and third place Texas by 11 seconds. Their win put them first out of the twenty boat field.
The men's varsity 4 (
Theodore Preaus,
Cooper Richart,
Costa Demetriades,
James Cone,
William Harris) went into the grand final with the fourth fastest time and they knew earning a medal would be no easy task. When the starting flag dropped and the boats shifted from their start phase, Rollins was sitting in fourth place behind Georgia, Texas and Vanderbilt. "The composure these guys developed this past week and this weekend paid dividends.", said Coach Pistor. "It was fun watching them trust each other and trusting what they knew they were capable of." As the fleet of boats crossed the 500m buoys, Georgia and Texas had open water on the field and Rollins had reeled Vanderbilt in. Rollins and Vanderbilt were not going to let the lead crews go. As Rollins started their 10 stoke focus before the 1000m buoys they had made contact with Georgia. Once that happened, the momentum had shifted and the TARS were on the hunt to take Georgia down. As the crews crossed the 1500m point, Texas had opened up a lead and the race was for second. With 300m left in the race, Rollins had finally gotten their bow ahead of Georgia and were not going to give that back. Every one of the last 15 strokes was to keep that lead and finish an amazing race. Rollins earned the silver medal finishing 1.7 seconds ahead of the Georgia boat they had overtaken, 3.7 seconds ahead of Vanderbilt and 6.8 seconds behind Texas.
The next event for the Men's Rowing Team is Dad Vails in Camden, New Jersey. The team plans to take these two boats along with a second men's varsity 4 and possibly a pair. The three fours all have similar speed which will keep the guys focused through finals and the end of the semester.
