Teens Medal at World Rowing Championships

The Detroit Boat Club is North America’s longest continuing rowing organization. (Photo via Facebook)

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Beatrice Bearnard, 13, of St. Clair Shores, and Sorin Koszyk, 17, of Grosse Pointe Park both medaled Sunday in the World Indoor Rowing Championships in Boston.

Beatrice won her medal in the youth-girls’ four-minute event, winning with a final distance of 1,062 meters. This bested last year’s winning distance of 1011 meters.

Sorin Koszyk captured a silver medal in the Lightweight Junior Men’s event with a time of 6:23.0, falling to the first place winner by only 0.5 seconds over 2000 meters.

Beatrice is coached by Nabil Shurafa and Ryan Kingsley, while Sorin is coached by long time crew coach, Dick Bell, and his assistant coach, David Macon.

Beatrice is the first Detroit area resident to win the World Indoor Rowing Championships, which typically draw more than 2,200 entrants from aroundtwo dozen countries racing over the 2000m distance, with competitors ranging in age from 13 to 100. There are also a growing number of adaptive rowers who compete over the 1000m adaptive distance.

The teens row for the Detroit Boat Club Crew on Belle Isle. The Detroit Boat Club is known as North America’s longest continuous rowing organization. From these early beginnings Detroit Boat Club crews have gone on to successfully compete on the local, regional, national, international and Olympic levels.

The Detroit Boat Club Crew Juniors (high school age) compete as a united crew drawing participants from approximately 10 different schools in the Detroit metropolitan area. The men’s and women’s Masters (age 21+) program successfully competes both regionally, nationally and internationally.