Two seniors on the Moorestown Rowing Club's girls' varsity eight rowing team recently inked scholarships with Division I schools. The first, 5-foot-11 Claire Wixted, who signed with UCLA, has the build, strength, and work ethic to fit the bill of the ideal rower. The second, at 5-foot-2, hardly has the build, and probably not the physical strength, either.
Instead, you might have to talk to Wixted to figure out what coxswain Sarah Tenenbaum brings to the table, and why she recently accepted a partial scholarship to the University of Delaware to be the rowing team's "small loud mouth."
"One of the biggest reasons why we've been able to have success is because we all understand that Sarah is the coxswain," Wixted said. "She makes the calls. We pour our trust into her.
"She's the only one who talks in the boat. We have such trust in her that it helps us remain focused on rowing. She's our leader. That was a big thing for us."
As the stroke, Wixted sits eye-to-eye with Tenenbaum in the boat. Tenenbaum described her chemistry with Wixted as being so intuitive that they often know what each is thinking on the water without having to speak.
"I notice different things than she does," Tenenbaum said. "So it really helps that we are comfortable enough with each other that we can communicate without talking. I've been her coxswain for four years. So I can tell when she needs something to be changed in the boat."
That chemistry translated into success for the Moorestown girls' rowing team.
Last season, the varsity eight made it to the semifinals of the Stotesbury Cup, won the Garden State Scholastic Regatta, and finished sixth in the C final of the U.S. Rowing Youth National Championships in Oak Ridge, Tenn., which was an experience Tenenbaum and Wixted described as one of the highlights of their high school career.
