Northville Rowing’s Men’s Pair Places 9th in Nation

After taking home gold at the Midwest Scholastic Rowing Association (MSRA) Championship Regatta held May 13-14 at Kensington Metropark, the power Men’s Pair team of Ben Kemnitz (Junior) and Danny DeAlmeida (Sophomore) qualified to compete at the USRowing Youth National Championships held June 9-12 in Sarasota, FL.

Together with head coach Nick Bickes, Kemnitz and DeAlmeida used the end of May and beginning of June to train hard to prepare for the 2,000-meter course at Nathan Benderson Park, running and rowing daily to build additional endurance and speed. After a solid qualifying race on June 9th against 32 other qualifying boat entries, and an equally good performance at the semi-finals on June 10th, Kemnitz and DeAlmeida raced in the Final B on June 12th. With a final time of 7:09.379, they placed 9th in the nation.

This is the first Northville Rowing boat to attend the prestigious annual USRowing Youth National Championships. The team supported Kemnitz and DeAlmeida while watching live from Michigan. Coach Bickes stated, “It was a great event and experience for our program. Ben and Danny did a lot of work to prepare and compete at the national level. It was great for our team to see the kind of competition at Youths. This is a big step for us and hopefully we will be back on this stage in the future.”

Northville Rowing hosts a variety of rowing camps this summer for high school and middle school students. For those with no rowing experience, there is a camp from August 1 to August 11 focused specifically on learning to row. Registration details can be found on their website www.northvillerowing.org. You can also follow them on Instagram or Facebook @northvillerowing.