For a former 100 Mile House student looking back on her last two years at a private boarding school on Vancouver Island, perhaps no time will be quite as memorable as the last two months.
Alexandra Lubbe, 17, was part of the Shawnigan Lake School quad rowing team, which won gold at the 2014 Canadian Secondary Schools Championship in St. Catherine’s, Ont. on June 8, while also rowing to a bronze medal in the senior women’s four.
With that top finish, the national champions earned a seat to race in the historic Henley Royal Regatta held on the River Thames in England a month later.
The prestigious annual event dates back to 1839 and saw an estimated 200,000 spectators over five days of world-class racing, July 1-6. Shawnigan Lake School drew a tough contender in Oxford’s Headington School, the previous year’s champions, in the first round and was eliminated in a head-to-head race by three lengths.
However, in St. Catherine’s, it was Shawnigan Lake that outpaced the five other boats in the 2000 metre quad final with a time of 7 minutes 20.13 seconds, two seconds faster than second place and about 12 seconds ahead of the sixth-place boat.
In the women’s four final, Lubbe and company captured bronze with a time of 8 minutes 21.94 seconds, six seconds behind the winner and half a second in front of fourth.
“It was pretty tough, but we worked hard all season,” says Lubbe. “It was really rewarding. It was a good feeling.”
Lubbe also won the “True Blue Award” this year, an honour bestowed on one student in each of Shawnigan Lake School’s nine boarding houses.
The award goes by student vote and acknowledges honesty, helpfulness and loyalty.
“I wasn’t expecting it, but it was really nice,” says Lubbe who recently graduated from the institution. “I voted for one of my friends. She only came to our school this year, but she’s probably the nicest person. She’s really genuine.”
Lubbe took the rest of the month of July off from rowing and speaking with her one gets the sense her summer is flying by. She’s studying sciences at the University of Victoria in the fall with plans of branching-off into a kinesiology program in her second year. She has already met with a rowing coach at the university and training camp starts on Aug. 25.
In England, Lubbe and her classmates visited Buckingham Palace and Eton College, an old Berkshire boarding school founded in 1440. Last October, she was one of about 9,000 athletes on the Charles River in Boston competing in the Head of the Charles Regatta, the world’s largest, where she took in more historic scenery from the water alongside the world’s best rowers and 300,000 spectators.
It was an experience she will never forget.
“I probably wouldn’t have gone to England or Boston without rowing.”
