Ridgewood Crew seniors Luciano Saladino and James Ryan capped off an undefeated lightweight rowing season this spring by winning a national championship in the Boys Lightweight Senior 2x race at the 2026 Scholastic Rowing Association of America regatta in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. (Credit: Jimmy Saladino)
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Oak Ridge, Tennessee – Ridgewood won its fifth national rowing title in five years and took home five medals overall at the 2026 Scholastic Rowing Association of America regatta this past weekend. And for the second year in a row, the team also topped the entire field for the most sculling event podium finishes — one gold, two silver, and two bronze — and ranked second among all schools for total medals won, coming just behind a sweeping program from the Midwest that took home six medals.
The two-day SRAA regatta brings together the best public and private high school rowers from across the country, and this year more than 1,500 rowers from 149 schools converged on the 1,500-meter sprint course at Tennessee’s Melton Lake. Crews raced in side-by-side heats on Friday and, depending on the number of entries, advanced through to semi-finals, before qualifying as one of the top six teams for Saturday afternoon’s finals.
Ridgewood set a program record back in April at the New Jersey Scholastic Rowing Championships by qualifying 10 boats for this year’s national SRAA regatta. The team then set another standard this past weekend when it sent eight boats through to the scholastic national championship finals.
“For our team to send this many boats through to the medal round is an incredible achievement because almost every boat here is already a state or regional champion,” said Ridgewood Crew Head Coach Boris Roque-Alvarez. “Many of these programs never compete against each other until they reach the national level, so it’s hard to predict how we will stack up against crews from other parts of the country. That we excelled in almost every category is a testament to the hard work and competitive fire of these athletes.”
The standout performance of the day came in the team’s first finals race, for the Boys Lightweight Double. While nothing is guaranteed in rowing, the all-senior duo of Luciano Saladino and James Ryan arrived in Tennessee as a heavy favorite for the gold, having never lost a lightweight race all season and enjoying lopsided margins of victory throughout the spring.
Friday’s qualifying races proved more of the same, as Saladino and Ryan easily cruised to victory in their heat to claim a spot in Saturday’s finals as the fastest boat in the field. And in that final, the pair jumped out to an early lead and then slammed the door shut, powering through to a national title by beating the runner-up by nearly eight seconds (5:17.87).
“These two seniors have paid their dues for years and all that effort really paid off this season — what an accomplishment,” said Roque-Alvarez.
Notably, Ryan just missed a medal in this event a year ago, finishing fourth, while Saladino took home the bronze at the 2025 SRAA regatta in the heavyweight Boys Senior 2x race.
This is the team’s fifth national scholastic gold in the past five years, having won the Girls Lightweight 2x event two years ago, the Boys Senior 1x in 2023, and the Girls Junior 4x and Senior 1x in 2022.
Senior Uhmjoo Han crafted some of his own finals magic in the Boys Senior 1x event this past Saturday. Having only finished second in his initial heat on Friday, and claiming one of the last two qualifying spots out of the semi-finals, he was seeded in a far outside lane for the medal race.
But after his coaches made a slight oar adjustment following the semis, Han charged out of the gate and took an early lead in the final. Only in the last 500 meters did the race favorite slowly pull into first, but Han’s furious stroke rate was too much for the rest of the field, earning him a silver medal and a national runner-up finish (5:57.83).
In the girls’ companion to the Senior 1x race, 14-year-old freshman phenom Jaya Suri likewise came close to pulling off an improbable upset. Racing against rowers three or four years older than her in the final, she followed through on her bold race plan to jump into an early lead and force the competition to catch her. Eventually, two rowers from the highly experienced field pulled ahead, but Suri still had an open water lead over the fourth-place boat as she crossed the finish line, bringing home an impressive bronze medal, with three more years to move up the podium (6:32.93).
Bronze was also the color of the day for Ridgewood’s Boys Senior 2x boat. Seniors Michael Shkop and Matt Moomjy brushed off a photo finish runner-up result in their heat that gave them the second-slowest qualifying time to quickly break out of the six-team pack in Saturday’s final. Fighting stroke for stroke down the stretch, the pair battled with a boat in the other outside lane, making it harder to gauge their relative position. Ultimately, that crew eked out the silver by just .63 seconds ahead of Ridgewood’s time (5:26,58).
The pre-eminent category in scholastic sculling is the quad, where all four rowers use two oars, and Ridgewood continued its strong tradition of excellence in this event once again in 2026. The team has had at least one quad boat medal at the national scholastic championships every year since 2022, and it qualified three 4x boats to compete at this year’s SRAA regatta.
Sophomores Zurie Yela and Nicole Manevich, and freshmen Courtney Spence and Gracie Demercado comprised one of those boats, the Girls Junior 4x, which made it through to the SRAA semis on Saturday morning, where the group came in a respectable fifth.
In the Boys Freshman 4x event, the all-9th grade crew of Graham Glidden, Lincoln Boudreau, Marko Granzan, and Jun Lee, having only rowed together for a matter of weeks, scored a solid third-place finish in their heat on Friday, punching their ticket for the weekend. In the final, they came in sixth (5:27.35).
Wrapping up Ridgewood’s podium finishes on Saturday was its final qualifying quad, the Boys Senior 4x crew. This veteran boat featured sophomores Graham and Wesley Richardson, junior Tristan Riedel, and senior Will Nasr and, coming into this weekend’s racing, this group had already amassed six prior SRAA medals between them. Nasr had reached the podium every year since his 2023 bronze medal in a freshman quad, including runner-up finishes in 2024 and 2025 in the Boys Junior and Senior 4x events, respectively. Riedel had joined him in those last two years and Graham Richardson had scored a silver in the Boys Junior 4x event last year.
This year’s Ridgewood Senior 4x boat easily sailed through its heat, winning by nearly 14 seconds and setting up yet another medal race against the team’s long-time archrival, Malvern Prep, which won the SRAA Boys Senior 4x title a year ago. In the final, those two boats quickly outclassed the field and Ridgewood was slowly eating into its rival’s open water lead but ultimately fell a few seconds short, earning its second consecutive scholastic national runner-up finish (4:53.48).
Ridgewood Crew set a new team record at the 2026 SRAA national championships in Oak Ridge, Tennessee by qualifying eight boats and 20 rowers for the finals. For the second year in a row, the team won the most sculling medals at the event and placed second in overall podium finishes. (Credit: Gabi Riedel)
Senior and team co-captain Maya Ashwin, who earned a silver in the Girls Senior 2x race at the 2025 SRAA regatta, was once again racing in the same event this year. Paired up with freshman Lucia Krauza, the duo came in a strong second place in Friday’s heat but finished just off the medal stand on Saturday, with a fourth-place result (6:15.63).
The lone sweeping boat for Ridgewood at this year’s SRAA regatta came in the Boys Lightweight Senior 4+ event. After finishing as the runner-up in their Friday heat, seniors Paul Hallowell and Daniel Hept, and sophomores Isaac Reynolds, Alex Evers, and coxswain Sam Rizzo, pulled out a gutsy performance to take third in their semi-final by less than two seconds, qualifying for the medal round. In the final, the crew took sixth (5:36.06).
Full times and results for Ridgewood Crew at the 2026 SRAA National Championships (https://results.regattatiming.com/backoffice/webpages/results/summary.jsp?raceId=631).
In the program’s 20-plus years, Ridgewood Crew has competed and excelled in both national and international competitions and its athletes have attracted interest from top rowing colleges and universities around the country. Ridgewood Crew offers several ways for you to experience our mission: join the team, volunteer, or donate. Student athlete programs begin with Learn-To-Row for middle schoolers. For more information contact Ridgewood Crew at http://www.ridgewoodcrew.com.
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