Race that stops the schools, and creates legends

Patricia Frazis will today recite the Lord’s Prayer in Greek then climb into a boat.

PLC first eight: Patricia Frazis, left, Lauren Hutton, Louisa Jackson, Emma Wilson, Eleanor Swick, Ella Matthews, Grace Bowen, Hayley Clarke, Portia Knight. Picture: Marie Nirme

Patricia Frazis, a 160cm dynamo who can steer a boat straight as an arrow, will today recite the Lord’s Prayer in Greek to eight strong, lean girls before joining them on the water.

Theirs is the rowing race that launches Olympic careers, and which has come to symbolise the fierce rivalry of Perth’s elite schools for status and enrolments.

The schoolgirls’ Head of the River meet is serious business in Western Australia. Independent schools, including Presbyterian Ladies College, where Patricia is the coxswain for the first eight, pour significant resources into a season that runs from February until today’s 2000m event at Champion Lakes, south of Perth.

PLC won its first Head of the River in 2012 and, now with 12 rowing coaches, has won four of the past five. Its first eight train in shells worth about $40,000 each.

The contribution of schools such as PLC and its longtime rival Methodist Ladies College to the standard of women’s rowing in Australia is acknowledged as significant. In turn, the schools welcome the International Olympic Committee’s decision to press for equal numbers of events for men and women at Tokyo in 2020.

the boat on the fly.

In WA, girls’ rowing fits around the boys’ season, so that WA boys go to the nationals in March at the peak of their season while girls go before they have even raced. PLC rowing coach Dave Milne expects this might change as the profile of girls’ rowing grows. “We do have the benefits of the nice conditions in April and May but it is not ideal that we are not able to race prior to nationals,” he said.

Last year when the WA Institute of Sport ran a program for girls with potential to row for Australia, all were from independent schools with rowing programs.

Emma Wilson, 16, was among three from PLC chosen to train at the institute. Today she will row in seat six in PLC’s first eight.

Emma is from a wheat and grain farm in Kulin, three hours’ drive from the coast; water sports were not part of her childhood. At PLC, she is seen as a natural rower, 186cm and strong.

Emma’s mother Sara Wilson jokes that farm kids tend to arrive at the rowing shed fit and ready. “They’ve had years of being paid nothing to work hard and lift heavy weights,” she says.

For Emma, the joy of rowing was almost instant. “When you are going really fast and the water is flat, the boat will whistle to you,” she said. “You can hear the bubbles coming up around the edge of the boat and it is the best feeling.”