Friends Select duo form bond on their boat
When Jacob Jamison entered ninth grade at Friends Select School, he figured it was time to try a sport. Crew seemed like a good choice.
When Jacob Jamison entered ninth grade at Friends Select School, he figured it was time to try a sport.
Crew seemed like a good choice.
"I was kind of a fat slob and I figured, 'How hard can it be?' " Jamison said.
He found out about the sport.
He found out about himself.
And he found out about the possibilities inherent in a true partnership.
All those lessons were clear over the final 200 meters of the boys senior double Saturday at the 89th annual Stotesbury Cup Regatta.
"I've been around the sport for 30 years," Friends Select coach Colin McAllister said. "That was one of the best sprints I've ever seen. They just crushed it."
The surprising victory by Jamison and Emmett Orts - who had finished third at the Philadelphia City championships earlier this month - was one of the highlights of the last day of racing at the world's oldest and largest high school regatta.
Jamison and Orts might not have been as emotional after their triumph as the girls on the Radnor senior four - "Is it real?" senior Kelsey Lally wondered amid the celebration on the dock - but they were just as proud of their accomplishment.
"We're resilient. We just never give up," Orts said after the duo's triumph on a warm, humid afternoon on the Schuylkill.
Every good rowing team finds its groove over the course of the season and over the course of a race. But Jamison and Orts developed a different kind of rhythm: Up and down, up and down.
"Good races and bad races," Jamison said.
The guys had been dominant last season, competing at the junior level. But this season was different, starting with a health scare to Jamison in the summer.
"I had pneumonia and couldn't row, and I was on the verge of quitting the sport," Jamison said. "[Orts] won a race without me, and I was kind of ticked off."
Said Orts: "He had to get back for our senior year. We got back together in the fall and took it from there."
Neither athlete rowed before freshman year at the school on the 1600 block of Race Street in Center City.
Orts figured he would try the sport because his father rows recreationally. Jamison wanted to find an extracurricular activity to help him get into better shape.
The partnership endured some highs and lows on the water, but the two athletes came to appreciate the strength of their shared sacrifice.
They will separate soon, when Jamison attends Brown University and Orts enrolls at Georgetown. Theirs is a partnership that is soon to cease.
But over those final 200 meters, as they pulled past a powerful duo from Montclair, they formed a bond that likely will last a lifetime.
"When I think of those boys, I think of their resiliency," McAllister said. "This victory goes to show how hard they worked for each other."
@PhilAnastasia