Published on: 25 March 2021




Christ Church Grammar School achieved third place overall after our Senior crews delivered strong performances across the board at last weekend’s Head of the River event at Champion Lakes.

The regatta got off to a promising start for the School as the Year 9 E Quad cruised to a 1st place finish almost two boat lengths ahead of 2nd place challengers from Aquinas College.

From there, the remaining Year 9 crews consistently finished in 4th place, until the Year 9 A Quad sealed a close win over Trinity College.

Our Eights crews kept things competitive in the lead up to the final races, with our Year 10 A Eight finishing in 2nd place, followed by a 3rd place finish for the Fourth Eight and two 4th place finishes for the Third and Second Eight respectively.

In the final Head of the River event our First VIII crew of Sebastian Chandraratna, Nick Cook, Grant Hogarth, Theo Klepec, Matt McGrath, Ollie Pemberton, Lachlan Sellars, Charlie Stevenson and Patrick Walker got off to a strong start behind a leading Scotch College and continued to the push the pace as they chased down a first place finish. As they crossed the 1500m mark it looked for a moment as if they just might catch up to the Scotch crew, however they ran out of room to mount a comeback win and finished a close 2nd after a gruelling 2000m race.

Teacher in Charge of Rowing, Mr Warwick Yeates, reflected on the boys’ performance and the culmination of the rowing season “Most crews raced their best race on Saturday, and as a shed, the Head of the River Regatta was our best of the season. While the First VIII were somewhat disappointed not to come away with a win, they recognise that they won the race that they thought they’d be rowing, coming away with a hard-fought 2nd place. They give full credit to an excellent performance from the victorious Scotch crew.”

Missed this year’s Head of the River? Footage of the races can be viewed here.