University of Massachusets Athletics
Rowing Represented At Prestigious National, World Meets
July 27, 2009 | Rowing
July 27, 2009
AMHERST, Mass. -
The summer months have been busy for several members and alums of the UMass women's rowing team on both the national and international stage. The Minutewomen are coming off a 2009 season which brought the 13th Atlantic 10 Championship Title to Amherst. With the experience of the summer training, be sure to keep up with UMass this fall and spring as the Minutewomen go for title No. 14.
Rising sophomore and All-Atlantic 10 rower Julia Richter has been rowing for Team Germany at the World Rowing Under-23 Championships in Racice, Czech Republic.
Germany and Ukraine were the favorites coming into the Women's Quad Finals, but it looked like Germany would be struggling to medal after Ukraine took a flying start and left the Germans over four seconds back just 500 meters into the race. By the half way point, Germany had begun to gain and had managed to get an overlap with the Ukrainians. The Ukraines held on, however, after finishing fourth last year. Joining Richter were Ulrike Toerpsch, Maren Stallkamp, and Christin Fernitz.
"We wished for gold and our coach said he believed we had the strength to win any medal, the shinier the better. And silver is already very shiny so we are very happy and we fulfilled our goal," said Richter.
At the United States Rowing National Championship Regatta held in Oak Ridge, Tenn., rising junior Liz Euiler (Meredith, N.H.) medaled in three races after four days of competition:
Gold - Intermediate Lightweight Pair
Silver - Intermediate Lightweight single
Bronze - Senior Lightweight Pair
Last season's team captain and now alumni Airlina Burrill (Eastham, Mass.)) also won several medals in the competition picking up Gold in the Intermediate Four and Silver in the Senior Eight.
Both Euiler and Burrill were representing the Pennsylvania Athletic Club.
Assistant coach and UMass alum Laura Simon was an assistant coach with the United States Junior National Team's High Performance Team that was selected to travel and train in Germany for 10 days from July 9th to the July 19th. The High Performance Group concluded its trip by scrimmaging the Germany Junior `A' Team that will be competing at the Junior World Championships.
A 1998 grad of UMass, Simon acted as the second Coxswain for the US National Women's Rowing Team from 1997-2002. In the summer of 2002, she was also a member of the US Women's Worlds Rowing Team, Lightweight Women's Single coaching staff, earning a silver medal.
