Junior Tristan Riedel and senior Will Nasr placed eight in the 2025 Head of the Charles Men’s Youth Doubles race, the highest individual race finish at that regatta in the club’s history. Credit: Jae Han
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, on a near-perfect day for rowing at the 60th Head of the Charles in Boston, where course records were broken in eight out of the regatta’s 12 youth events, Ridgewood Crew made its own history with a best-ever team performance that included an eighth-place finish and two other boats finishing 11th.
As the largest three-day rowing regatta in the world, the Head of the Charles is now in its 60th year, and, in 2025, attracted nearly 12,000 youth, collegiate, and masters athletes from 852 clubs and 23 countries. Due to its popularity and high level of racing, this regatta requires boats to place in the top half of their event to earn the right to return the following year, while new clubs must apply and win a draw to get a chance to compete.
The HOCR course presents its own set of complex challenges as well, requiring rowers to power their boats upriver past six bridges and several sharp turns before reaching the finish line 4,702 meters from the start. And because head racing is run as staggered start time trials, boats that start later in an event must also navigate around their competition if they want to do well.
“For youth rowers, there is no bigger race in North America — and probably the world — than the Head of the Charles, so just being able to compete at this regatta is a privilege,” said Ridgewood Crew Head Coach Boris Roque-Alvarez. “This year, we sent more athletes than ever to the Head of the Charles, and they responded with some performances that made club history.”
Ridgewood Crew’s events took place during the first half of Sunday’s races, which are reserved for youth competition.
The team’s best highest overall finish on the day came in a very competitive Men’s Youth Doubles race, where the winning time broke the three-year-old course record by four seconds. Despite Ridgewood having to start 55th out of 56 — the next-to-last starting slot in the race — junior Tristan Riedel and senior Will Nasr expertly powered through the course and picked off one rival boat after another to finish in eighth place overall (17:15.542).
In a notable coincidence, the team’s most recent top 10 finish at this regatta before Sunday also involved a member of the Riedel family. In 2021, Tristan’s older sister, then-Ridgewood senior Llian, finished ninth in the HOCR Women’s Youth Singles race. (Now racing with Northeastern University, she placed sixth in the HOCR Women’s Club Eights event on Saturday.)
The Ridgewood duo of freshman Jaya Suri and senior team captain Maya Ashwin also had to face a far-back-in-the-pack starting position in their Women’s Youth Doubles race. But thanks to a quick first half and veteran boatmanship by the bow seat rower Ashwin, the pair cruised into 11th place out of a field of 57 (19:48.557).
Sunday’s lightning-fast course conditions were evident during the first race of the day, the Men’s Youth Singles. By the end of that event, the 18-year-old winner had smashed the course record by 25 seconds — which he himself had just set the year before. Ridgewood’s entry, 15-year-old sophomore Graham Richardson, followed suit with an impressive performance of his own that placed him 11th out of 44, and third among the event’s Under-17 racers (19:09.318).
Thanks to those performances, Ridgewood Crew earned automatic bids for the 2026 HOCR in the Men’s Youth Double, Women’s Youth Double, and Men’s Youth Single events.
Ridgewood also fielded a boat in the Men’s Youth Eights race for the second year in a row. With a crew of mostly seniors — Paul Hallowell, Uhmjoo Han, Sam Scharfenberg, Daniel Hept, James Ryan, Michael Shkop, and Luciano Saladino — and one sophomore, Kai Bissie, and coxed by junior Hope Martino, the boat came in 60th (15:59.262). Ridgewood competed against a massive field of 85 other boats, which tied for the largest number of single-race entries on the day.
Full times and results for Ridgewood Crew at the 2025 Head of the Charles (https://www.regattacentral.com/regatta/results2?job_id=9637&org_id=0).
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.
