Million Metre Row

On Saturday 20 May over 150 Year 7 to Upper Sixth students, their families and members of staff undertook our Million Metre Row challenge at the historic Goldie Boathouse in a bid to raise money for the our rowing programme. Rowing the equivalent of 26 marathons (1 million metres) over the course of the day the students and their families rowed at least 16 kilometres each, with many of them coming back and adding to the total over the course of the day.

During the morning the girls were joined by 10 members of the Cambridge University Boat Club, including Chief Coach, Olympian (Gold, Sydney 2000) and Junior School parent, Steve Trapmore MBE, who rowed alongside the girls as part of their training. During the afternoon the winning Cambridge University Women’s Boat Club squad (which includes Tokyo 2020 hopefuls) also attended the event, with Rio 2016 Olympian, Claire Lambe (Ireland) rowing to help make up the distance. Claire and her fellow crew members not only inspired the girls with their experiences but found themselves being inspired by the girls and their determination, commenting that their enthusiasm was infectious.

Miss Julie Hogg, Head of Development & Fundraising said: “Since October, we have been running a weekend rowing programme for girls aged 12 to 16. The programme is proving so successful that we want to expand our offering so more students can participate. To enable this to happen we need to raise funds for more equipment as well as coaching resources.”

In order to accommodate more students into the rowing programme we are partnering with the City of Cambridge Rowing Club to replace and expand the existing boathouse. The new boathouse will be available to accommodate more students into the club by the summer of 2018 – coinciding with the school’s wider investment in sport this year with the substantial regeneration of our sports ground located on Long Road.

Ms Avery thanked all of the girls and families who took part in the event, saying that she enjoyed helping them to meet the 1 million metre mark.  All monies raised will directly benefit our students, as we can build up our rowing offering. Ms Avery said: “We have a really talented group of rowers and we want them to have the opportunity to compete at the Henley Women’s Regatta or the Junior Inter-Regional Regatta in due course and the monies raised from the event will help us achieve this.”