Boat with Holy Spirit alumnus Seamus Labrum at coxswain finishes sixth at worlds Learning House

Boat with Holy Spirit alumnus Seamus Labrum at coxswain finishes sixth at worlds

July 23, 2011 – 8:35 am

The United States four-with-coxswain crew, with Holy Spirit High School graduate Seamus Labrum at coxswain, finished sixth in the championship race at the World Rowing Under-23 Championships in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on Saturday.

Serbia won the six-boat, 2,000-meter Final A race in 6 minutes, 3.01 seconds, and the U.S. boat finished in 6:14.44. Germany was second in 6:04.89 and France took third in 6:07.03.

“It was definitely a very heightened level of competition, the best in the world,” Labrum said in a phone interview. “It was tough to get ahead and it didn’t work out the way we wanted it to. The conditions were tough. There was a ripping tailwind and it was difficult keeping the together and matching up. Everything moves faster.

“We did improve on last year when finished last in the B final. We’re looking to take something positive out of it, and we made the A final, which is a big improvement.”

The U.S. boat qualified for the Final A by finishing second to Germany in a first-round heat on Thursday.

Australia won the Final B in 6:15.35 on Saturday.

Labrum, 20, a Cape May Court House resident, is the coxswain of the University of Washington men’s varsity four, which won the Intercollegiate Rowing Association championship on the Cooper River in Camden on June 4. He’ll be a junior next season.

Labrum and four Washington rowers, not those of his regular four-boat, won the U.S. Under-23 Trials against 27 other boats on June 29 at Mercer Lake in West Windsor.

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