Cooper River

The Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championships on the Cooper River in Camden County this week have drawn hundreds of rowers from all across the country. About 40 colleges and universities were invited to send teams. The competition is a battle among the cream of the crop. Races will continue through Saturday. It's the fourth time the event has been held on the Cooper River. The championships date back to 1895.

The 97th Intercollegiate Rowing Association National Championship Regatta swooped into action yesterday morning on the Cooper River in Camden County. By tomorrow, 160 crews from as far away as the West Coast will have competed over the 2,000-meter course in the three-day regatta. Heats for the men's varsity eight and lightweight eight finals and the women's lightweight finals are scheduled to take place tomorrow.

In the cold twilight, six crews raced to a blanket finish no more than three boat lengths apart as the seventh annual La Salle College Invitational Regatta ended dramatically yesterday on the Cooper River in Camden County Park. The Mercyhurst oarsmen powered the prow of their shell ahead of Washington College of Chestertown, Md., by one-quarter of a length for a varsity eight triumph by virtue of a strong sprint late on the 2,000-meter course. Mercyhurst sped the distance in the face of a cold crosswind in 6 minutes and 31.9 seconds as against 6:32.

Think about the protection that lashes afford eyes, and you'll have an idea of how the Cooper River is affected when its banks are bare of vegetation. "Pollutants are free to enter the river as the bank continues to erode," said Westmont resident and environmental activist Fred Stine. "Soil erosion is a major problem for the river. " Delaware Riverkeeper Network, Stine's nonprofit, volunteer environmental-action group, has been working to slowly restore the eight miles of riverbank along the Cooper River by organizing hundreds of volunteers for mass plantings.

Sure, Temple's heavyweight eight is the big fish at the Dad Vail Regatta, but that's an event for small fry. The Intercollegiate Rowing Association Regatta, which will be held today, tomorrow and Saturday, is a much larger pond. The Owls, small-program beast that they are - they've won the Dad Vail eight straight times - might be swallowed whole by the giants trolling the Cooper River in Pennsauken this weekend. Sure, Penn's varsity eight surprised everyone by winning the Ivy League championship 11 days ago at the Eastern Sprints in Worcester, Mass.

Camden firefighters yesterday recovered the body of Tia Pratt, 5, who drowned Thursday with her father after the small boat they were riding in on the Cooper River near 10th and State Streets took on water and overturned. A search continued for the body of Robert Lee Pratt, 35, of Ablett Village. Fire Capt. William Huelas said that shortly before 11 a.m. rescuers found the girl's body in shallow waters of the Cooper River, about 800 feet south of the 10th Street Bridge. He said firefighters searched the area from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. when rough waters forced them to discontinue dragging operations.

With its his­tor­ic boathouses and mon­u­ment to Olym­pic gold med­al­ist John B. Kel­ly, the Schuylkill has been at the epi­cen­ter of Amer­i­can row­ing going back to the 19th cen­tu­ry. But when it comes to the realities of mod­ern racing — with records on the line and arguments over slow lanes — many race or­gan­iz­ers now­a­days head across the Ben Frank­lin Bridge to the Coop­er River. This week­end and next the Coop­er will host scho­las­tic and col­le­giate na­tion­al championships — bringing thousands of rowers and spectators to a riv­er that many of the sport's elite have come to know in­ti­mate­ly in re­cent years.

A "mountain" of silt has sparked a dispute between two Camden County government agencies that had been cooperating to clean up one of New Jersey's worst polluted waterways - the Cooper River. State officials have entered the fray to try to smooth over the differences between the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority and the Camden County Park Commission. Last week, the park commission accused the CCMUA of creating a sandbar in the river through improper construction practices.

A Camden man and his 5-year-old daughter were missing and presumed drowned in the Cooper River in Camden last night after a boating accident that the man's 9-year-old son survived, police said. Police received a report at 5:14 p.m. that three people had fallen from a boat into the river near 10th and State Streets, Camden police Detective Richard G. Desmond said. Rescuers arriving at the scene found the boy, Michael Searles, who told them he had been with his father and sister on the boat when it flipped.

To walk the upper Cooper River trail is to discover a secret hidden in plain sight. Who knew so much woodsy, watery, almost-wilderness awaited visitors to this corner of South Jersey, where Cherry Hill and Haddonfield meet? "I've lived here all my life," says Bob Feltoon, an attorney from Voorhees. "I take Park Drive all the time. And I've never walked back here. " Says Merchantville businesswoman Marilyn Axler, an active gardener and park patron, "I didn't know about this.

HE WAS an enigma to the authorities and a curiosity to collectors, a man who could have made bundles with his brains. But not all of Francis L. Henning's plans were foolproof or legal, and he fled South Jersey in 1955 with the feds on his tail, dumping buckets full of shiny evidence in local waterways. On Oct. 28 that year, Henning, looking both distinguished and defeated in a light suit, stood for a mug shot in Cleveland, where he was making $700 a month as a mechanical engineer — more than twice the national average for the era. Henning was a counterfeiter who strategically dreamed small, it seems, to fly under the radar of the agency he figured would be looking for fakes: the Secret Service.

In the final stretch Saturday, the fans of the University of Washington boat cheered their team home. They knew they were seconds from gripping the national championship, their second in as many years. "We're cooking," senior coxswain Sam Ojserkis told his teammates. As they crossed the last leg of the 2,000-meter varsity eight grand finals, the Huskies rowed past those lining the Cooper River in Cherry Hill, past the fans and the giant TV monitor and the P.A. announcer.

Rowing lifers call it "breaking the oar," as in pulling so hard that you're trying to snap the oar in two. That's what Mike Teti was doing that day long ago, in the 7-seat for Monsignor Bonner High. It didn't matter to him that Bonner's 5-seat had gotten his own oar stuck in the water and had just completely ejected himself from the boat, stopping the shell. As the 5-seat floated by on the Schuylkill, Teti wasn't thinking rescue, just win, yelling for the stroke to increase the stroke rate, with 900 meters left and Father Judge pulling ahead.

Sometimes the big move doesn't show up on a scoreboard. To his credit, the race announcer on a launch Thursday afternoon in the Cooper River caught it, halfway through the 2,000-meter race course, during the 16th of 20 races on the first day of rowing at the Intercollegiate Rowing Association's national championships. He called out . . . "Look at those Quakers!" Maybe the guy understood the whole context, that 10 strokes in an afternoon repechage race can define a season.

With its his­tor­ic boathouses and mon­u­ment to Olym­pic gold med­al­ist John B. Kel­ly, the Schuylkill has been at the epi­cen­ter of Amer­i­can row­ing going back to the 19th cen­tu­ry. But when it comes to the realities of mod­ern racing — with records on the line and arguments over slow lanes — many race or­gan­iz­ers now­a­days head across the Ben Frank­lin Bridge to the Coop­er River. This week­end and next the Coop­er will host scho­las­tic and col­le­giate na­tion­al championships — bringing thousands of rowers and spectators to a riv­er that many of the sport's elite have come to know in­ti­mate­ly in re­cent years.

Merion Mercy won the girls' varsity four grand final, and Conestoga won a pair of varsity finals in the Scholastic Rowing Association of America's national championships on the Cooper River on Saturday. Merion Mercy posted a time of 5 minutes, 30.144 seconds in the varsity four, and Conestoga went home with titles in the girls' varsity double and varsity quad races. Mount St. Joseph finished third in the varsity eight race. In the boys' competition, Malvern Prep led the field in the varsity quad race, edging Conestoga by 2 seconds, and Father Judge captured the varsity four petite final.

Merion Mercy won the girls' varsity four grand final, and Conestoga won a pair of varsity finals in the Scholastic Rowing Association of America's national championships on the Cooper River on Saturday. Merion Mercy posted a time of 5 minutes, 30.144 seconds in the varsity four, and Conestoga went home with titles in the girls' varsity double and varsity quad races. Mount St. Joseph finished third in the varsity eight race. In the boys' competition, Malvern Prep led the field in the varsity quad race, edging Conestoga by 2 seconds, and Father Judge captured the varsity four petite final.

Katie Ewell feels her boat getting faster and faster, just in time for the Stotesbury Cup Regatta. "It's the biggest race of the year," Ewell, a senior at Bishop Eustace Prep, said of the annual regatta that will be held Friday and Saturday on the Schuylkill. Ewell and her teammates on the Bishop Eustace varsity eight boat hope to be in contention for a medal at the world's oldest and largest high school regatta. This year's event is expected to draw 5,000 athletes from 198 high schools competing in 925 boats.

Camden County's Cooper River Park could become a much better version of itself now that the county is beginning a long-awaited $23 million, five-year face-lift that will bring people to the water's edge for recreation. This is a welcome project in a park that will pull together urban and suburban outdoor enthusiasts looking for a good softball game, run, picnic, walk, bike ride, or boat race, or who just want to throw a line in the water and hope a bass or catfish bites. Too few people enjoy the river's edge on the Jersey side, but Philadelphia landscape architects Cairone and Kaupp have designed a handsome combination of paths, boardwalks, and overlooks to bring more visitors there.