Everett U17 girls prove mettle at youth rowing nationals
Published 9:23 am Tuesday, June 16, 2026
The Everett Rowing Association (ERA) girls knew they needed to start out fast in the U17 Coxed Four semifinals at the USRowing Youth National Championships in Sarasota, Florida on Saturday.
Only the top four teams would qualify for the ‘A’ finals on Sunday, and the remaining ‘B’ finalists would have to race again just three hours after the semifinals, so Everett surged to the front of the pack right away. However, as their opponents closed the gap midway through the race, coxswain Aurora O’Brien’s microphone cut out.
O’Brien quickly realized what happened and managed to restore the communication before it turned into a disaster, but the rowers also found a way to turn the brief slip into a mental reset.
“It sort of woke me up again,” said Ruby Eagan-Heffernan, the bow seat. “I was still rowing and focused on it the whole time, but it reminded me that it was important to be really focused, and that we couldn’t have a problem at any moment. We needed to be able to recover from that, and just generally work as hard as possible, so that we could make up if we had any issues like that earlier in the race.”
Despite slipping into third place, Everett held on with a time of 7:46.53 to punch its ticket to the ‘A’ finals on Sunday, where the crew of Eagan-Heffernan, Adeline Palmiter, Kiri Withington, Kayleigh Baker and the coxswain O’Brien ultimately placed seventh with a time of 8:10.45.
It’s one thing to prove you’re among the best in your age group on a national level, but the Everett U17 girls stretch the definition of “age group.” Eagan-Heffernan is in eighth grade, and O’Brien is only in sixth.
“I’m just really impressed at the level they’ve been able to reach, given their age, number one,” ERA varsity women’s coach Mallory Potts told The Herald over the phone. “But also their level of rowing experience. Two of the girls on the boat have been rowing for less than a year, and our coxswain same, so just to get to this level is pretty amazing.”
On top of that, this specific combination had only been rowing together for a few weeks. With half coming from the varsity side and the other half rowing on the novice side under coach Matt Lacey, it created a bit of a learning curve heading into the Northwest Youth Regional Championships in Vancouver, Washington on May 15-17.
“I think it improved all of us as rowers,” Eagan-Heffernan said. “Because it gave us a chance to adapt to people of different experience and skill levels, new people we hadn’t rowed with before, and the way they rowed. So I think that chase for improvement just allowed us all to become better.”
It proved to be a successful combination, as Everett placed second in their division with a time of 7:50.25. But once they arrived in Florida for nationals, it was far from smooth sailing– er, rowing.
The scheduled practice day on June 10 got completely wiped out due to lightning in the area, so Everett had to jump straight into the time trials on June 11, which also got delayed to the point where they sat in their car for a couple of hours until finally racing at sunset.
Everett placed sixth in the time trial at 7:33.56, but the semifinal got pushed from Friday into Saturday due to weather once again. At a certain point, the biggest priority became getting into air conditioning at the team’s rental house, where they had more bonding time than they accounted for.
“I think the girls did a really, really good job adapting to kind of unplanned delays and schedule changes,” Potts said. “We had our schedule set out by the hour on our itinerary, ready for this trip, but I think just weather got in the way, but I think that they did a really good job adapting to that.”
Added Withington: “I think we trained hard enough and long enough (during the season) that it didn’t really matter to us.”
After navigating through an ever-changing schedule and gutting to a top three placement in the semifinals, Everett felt excited and motivated to square off against the best crews in the country.
While their time in the finals was not quite as fast as the previous races, they closed out the weekend with no regrets.
“As I ended that race, I wasn’t disappointed in anyone,” O’Brien said. “I thought we pushed ourselves to the limit, and every other crew did, too. Maybe there was something we could do better, but I have not found that yet, and I hope that we don’t find that because I know we used everything we possibly could.”
With the experience at nationals under their belt, the Everett girls will take some time to rest entering the summer, especially after extending the season longer than usual. Soon enough, they’ll jump back into summer rowing and get ready for the fall season, which they will enter with a little more pedigree than they had a year ago.
“I felt really proud of my teammates because throughout the race, it was very clear to me that we had been working very hard together,” Palmiter said. “And that all of them had put in the same effort that I had, and we were also very hot. We were not built for Florida. We were very glad to be done and go in, so yeah, it was very exciting.”
