By Mrs Reeves (Head Rowing Coach)

Last weekend, 12 rowers and two coxes from BGS competed at the prestigious Henley Women’s Regatta. Held at the ‘home of rowing’ in the UK, Henley-on-Thames. Henley Women’s Regatta is the largest women only international regatta in the country, with ladies from clubs, schools and universities competing over three full days of racing and competitors travelling from across the world, as far as America and Australia.

BGS entered three crews into the event; a WJ16 IV, a Senior IV and a WJ16 Quad. Each of these crews began their regatta completing a 1400m time trial to qualify to race in the main part of the regatta. On Friday evening, travelling straight down from Henley from their GCSE exams, our J16 squad took to the water. Both our quad and four put in their best performances to date, in very competitive fields, racing for the very first time on the Henley course. Our J16 quad of Martha Ibbott, Emily Dyall, Evie Hayward and Carys Roberts narrowly missed out on qualifying through the time trial, a great row particularly after the switch back to sculling following the National Schools Regatta. For our J16 IV, they again put in an outstanding row, not only qualifying into the main regatta, but placing themselves in the top 8 crews of the event. This qualified them through to Saturday’s racing.

Saturday saw one of the best days of racing for BGS for a number of years, and was certainly one to remember. The day started with our Senior First IV completing their qualifying races. The crew of Chloe Howe, Anna Beckmann, Lottie Giles, Emily Pinkney, and cox, Alex Gentry certainly brought their A game and qualified through to the side by side racing in their event, placing themselves in the top 16 crews in Championship Girls Fours.

The latter part of the day saw two BGS crews racing side by side at Henley for the first time in a number of years. Our Senior IV competed against Shiplake College, and in a very tough race concluded their Women’s Henley for 2023 with a result to be proud of. However, the performance of the weekend must go to our J16 IV, who made the Quarter Finals of Henley Women’s Regatta for 2023, missing out on a semi-final place by a very small margin in one of the closest races of the whole weekend to a crew from Glasgow Academy. Congratulations to Jess Wiggs, Ellie Mullan, Ais Fitzpatrick, Elyse Vickers and cox Licia Cacioppo.

These results are the best results that BGS have had at Henley Women’s since 2016, and the coaching team are incredibly proud of every single student that represented the school over the course of the regatta, performing fantastically on such a big stage. Not only should they be proud of their rowing and racing, but the sportsmanship, professionalism and enthusiasm that they demonstrated throughout the whole experience.