Henley Island homecoming
Long-time Eden coach back at Schoolboy, this time with novices from Florida under his wing
Brian Elliott’s “home away from home” on Henley Island isn’t so close to home nowadays. Far, far from it. When he was coaching rowers at Eden High School and living near St. Ann Catholic Elementary School in Port Dalhousie, the boathouses were within walking distance.
All that changed last August when the retired Niagara Regional Police officer moved to West Palm Beach, Fla., along with son Justus who was starting his studies at The King’s Academy prep school.
While the Canadian Secondary Schools Rowing Association (CSS RA) championships didn’t get underway until Friday, Elliott set off from West Palm Beach, with four single shells in tow, on Tuesday.
“It’s a long haul, 23 hours of hard driving,” said Elliott, who coaches students from 22 high school in his capacity as an instructor with the North Palm Beach Rowing Club.
Six others – four rowers, two coaches – also made the trek north for the program’s debut at the CSSRA regatta, but they all flew.
“Somebody had to take care of those shells,” he said with a laugh, pointing to the custom-rigged boats. “That’s pretty expensive equipment over there, you don’t want to see it damaged in any way.”
Elliott spent 25 years coaching at Eden, where his wife Janet is a teacher, during the high school season, and he still coaches at the Ridley Graduate Boat Club during the summer season.
Still, being on the island as part of a visiting team took some getting used to.
“This is the first time I’ve been out in the grass,” he said. “I’ve always been in the boathouse before.”
Entered in six races and with only four athletes, all in their first season of rowing and each competing in at least one singles event, North Palm Beach is among the smallest contingent’s at the three-day event boasting 2,034 athletes in all.
Nonetheless, Elliott has top-ofthe-podium aspirations for his small crew of novices. Marisella Adams- Grimaldi, 14, Gracie Leon, 15, Kolton Paxton, 16, and Aryanna Ramsey, 17, have won medals throughout the season south of the border and were pace-setters at a regional championship involving rowers from seven states in the southeast.
“They’ve won a lot of medals down there.”
Given that 1,500 metres is the racing distance for high school rowing in the U.S., a repeat of that success isn’t necessarily guaranteed once those rowers have to compete at 2,000 metres, the standard in Canada as well as at the Olympics.
“That’s always the risk, isn’t it,” Elliott said. “You’re fast down there, but now you see how they can compete against kids from the north.”
“You’ve got to race like snot in the first 500 in the 1,500, but if you do that here you’re going to finish last.”
Paxton, for one, is looking forward to the challenge of executing a race plan in which energy is conserved to insure a strong finish.
“We train at 2,000, but we race at 1,500,” he said. “You can’t approach it as a sprint, because it isn’t.”
Leon agreed with Paxton that an explosive start is the last thing rowers from the U.S. need when they compete in Canada.
“It’s all about hanging in and being there at the end,” he said. “Everybody in the third 500 is really tired.”
“You want to be the one who has enough left for the last 500.”
A rower in a single also doesn’t want to end the race too far back of the pack because of wasting time sightseeing.
“As long as you can see where everyone is at the start of the race, you don’t have to look anymore,” Ramsey said.
Elliott said he will be disappointed if his rowers don’t win at least three medals in the finals on Sunday.
“This is the one we’ve been training for all year,” he said. “We’ve been training for the 2,000 simultaneously with our different races.”
When it comes to high school rowing, Elliott, a Sir Winston Churchill graduate, Class of 1979, is one Bulldog who is more than capable of teaching tricks to future waves of rowers.
And he has the medals to prove that he understands first-hand how to put that theory into practice. Elliott won 10 medals at the CSSRA championships in five years racing singles and doubles at Churchill.
“That record will probably stand forever because there’s no Grade 13,” said Elliott, who won five gold medals in singles, two in doubles and three silvers in doubles with the Bulldogs.
He went on to row at the University of Victoria but returned home after a year out west to begin a 32 1/2-year career with the NRP.
Elliott qualified to row for Canada at the 1980 Summer in Olympics in Moscow but Canada boycotted those games after the then Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
He was ready to compete for a spot on the national team four years later but tryouts were moved up, leaving him only two weeks to get ready.
“I was really fast back then, but not that fast,” Elliott, now 57, said with a laugh.
He rowed competitively into his 40s with the Ridley Graduate Boat Club and won a gold medal in senior singles at the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta at age 41.
This is the first time I’ve been out in the grass. I’ve always been in the boathouse before.” North Palm Beach Rowing Club coach Brian Elliott