the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Ridgewood Crew capped off its spring regular season in impressive fashion this past weekend at the 2025 Stotesbury Cup Regatta, winning the title of top Boys Junior Quad boat for the second straight year and scoring three other top-three finishes.
The Stotesbury Cup is the largest scholastic rowing event in the country, where competitors from ninth through 12th grades race down a straight 1,500-meter course on the Schuylkill River. This year’s regatta featured 4,774 rowers, 820 boats, and 165 clubs, hailing from 9 U.S. states and one Canadian province. Ridgewood had the second-most entries of any club with 11 and, after Friday’s time trials, had qualified nine boats for Saturday’s final rounds of rowing.
But a massive thunderstorm interrupted racing in the middle of Friday’s racing for several hours, and the resulting surge of water pouring into the Schuylkill overnight left the river churning and full of debris. As a result, regatta officials and team coaches chose to cancel the second day of racing, and Friday’s times decided the final rankings.
“Having a big regatta like this cut short is always disappointing, but it was the right call. Our team always rows hard in the time trials for just that very reason, you just never know,” said Ridgewood Crew Head Coach Boris Roque-Alvarez. “Overall, I’m extremely pleased. Stotes is a real test against some of the best rowing schools in the country, and so this was a very strong finish to our regular season. And for many of our rowers, there is still more to come as we look forward to Scholastic and USRowing Nationals Championships.”
Ridgewood’s top performance at the Stotesbury Cup felt like a bit of déja vu from two weeks ago at the City Championships on the same race course. There, the Boys Junior Quad boat retained the title the team won at that regatta in 2024. And this past weekend, the same crew of juniors Matt Moomjy, Michael Shkop, Uhmjoo Han, and freshman Graham Richardson helped Ridgewood repeat as champions in the Boys Junior Quad race at the Stotesbury Cup. In their Friday time trial that included 22 other competitors, including two boats from Canada, they outpaced the entire field, and so Ridgewood got to hoist the George C. Hines Trophy once again (4:24.35).
For the second year in a row, Ridgewood Crew took home the George C. Hines Trophy for winning the Boys Junior Quad race at the Stotesbury Cup. This year’s winning boat was crewed by juniors Matt Moomjy, Michael Shkop, Uhmjoo Han, and freshman Graham Richardson. (Credit: Christine Moomjy)
Last year’s winning crew in that junior varsity event just missed claiming their own trophy this year in the varsity race at Stotes. The boat of sophomore Tristan Riedel, juniors Will Nasr and Sam Scharfenberg, and senior Lucas Evers took second in their Boys Senior Quad time trial, finishing a literal eye-blink — .18 seconds — behind the winning time (4:22.95).
The Boys Senior Double crew of junior Luciano Saladino and senior Will Carroll also landed on the podium, marking the fourth straight weekend the pair has taken home a medal. On Friday, they came in just .42 seconds slower than the second-fastest boat, and claimed the bronze (4:54.46).
In their best performance of the season, the Boys Freshman Quad crew of David Pasternak, Kai Bissie, Isaac Reynolds, and Conner Cinco shot across the finish line with a time good enough for third place (4:50.11). This crew’s bronze medal against 19 other boats on Friday was a significant step up from their fourth-place finish just two weeks earlier, when their boat faced eight competitors at the City Championships.
Other notable Ridgewood performances included several boats that qualified for the semi-finals or finals, but their times didn’t put them on the podium. The all-junior Boys Lightweight Double boat of James Ryan and Daniel Hept came in fourth overall, finishing exactly one second shy of the third-place time (4:47.57). The pair had won medals for three consecutive weeks coming into the Stotesbury Cup.
The lone singles racer for Ridgewood this past weekend, Andrii Onizhuk, put in a standout performance in one of the most crowded categories of the regatta. Racing 40 other rowers, the junior cruised into fifth place (5:18.42).
One of Ridgewood Crew’s girls boats had qualified for Saturday before racing was cancelled. Senior Julia Smith and junior Maya Ashwin finished seventh in the Girls Senior Double time trial (5:30.49).
The all-11th grade duo in the Boys Junior Double event, Paul Hallowell and Oliver Ilin-Schneider, finished with a time ultimately good enough for ninth place (5:09.39).
Ridgewood’s only coxed boat, crewed by sophomores Gabe Dozortsev, Atticus Smith, Andrew Segura, Kamran Sarmad, and Josh Reynolds (coxswain), also fought their way to a semi-final qualification before racing was called off. In what was the most crowded event at this year’s regatta, Ridgewood’s Boys Junior Four boat came in 17th overall (5:02.20) out of 55 total entries.
Full times and results for Ridgewood Crew at the 2024 Stotesbury Cup (https://www.regattacentral.com/regatta/results2/?job_id=8540&org_id=0).
In the program’s 20-year history, Ridgewood Crew rowers have 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.
