2024 Spring Race Team

Who is the Spring Race Team?

  • High School athletes who have competed on previous WBC Youth Race Team.
  • Athletes whose school doesn’t offer a rowing team.
  • Athletes who want to be competitive against clubs from all over the country.
  • Athletes who want to gain experience rowing and competing.

Program Goals and Expectations

  • Attend all practices 5 days a week.
  • Row in both Sculling and Sweep boats.
  • Commit to the training plan put out by our experienced coaches.
  • Commit to competing in all regattas.
  • Our goal is to send multiple boats to USRowing Youth National Championships, June 6-9 in Sarasota, FL.

Schedule

February 17-June 9

Tentative Regatta Schedule:

Meet Your Coaches

Coach Joe has been involved in rowing in some capacity for over 40 years, starting as an athlete and then coaching. A Philadelphia native, Coach Joe rowed at Monsignor Bonner and went on to row at Temple University, where his boat won the 1983 Dad Vail Regatta. After college Joe kept his love of rowing up when he joined Vesper Boat Club.

Coach Joe began coaching in 1984, when he helped many of the local Philly high schools start their competitive rowing programs. An accomplished coach, he has many highlights, including:

Medaling 3 boats at SRAA Championships;
Qualifying and leading 15 boats to Youth Nationals Championships where multiple boats made it to A and B finals;
2 gold medal wins at the Royal Canadian Henley;
A gold medal win at the Head of the Charles Regatta; and
Coaching over 14 athletes who made the Junior National Team.

Still connected to the national rowing community, Coach Joe has helped many high school rowers and coxswains be recruited to Division 1 colleges and universities.

Coach Art brings with him a lifetime of rowing experience. He has been involved with the rowing community since the 1960’s and has seen success at every level. As a high school student, he rowed for Groton School in Massachusetts. He went on to row for 3 years in the men’s varsity 8+ at Dartmouth College. Upon graduation, Art left New Hampshire and made his way to Philadelphia’s own Vesper Boat Club, where he competed at the elite level for nearly 10 years. During his time as an elite rower, he won multiple National Championships in both sweep and sculling events. To this day, you will find Art rowing his single on our stretch of the Schuylkill.

Art has coached everything from high school novices, to collegiate varsity, to high performance athletes, and world championship teams. If you are at all familiar with Philadelphia scholastic rowing, you have seen one of Art’s boats winning a race. For 19 years he was Associate Head Coach at Malvern Preparatory School. During his time at Malvern Prep, Art has helped produce more than 20 National Champion crews and has seen over 40 of his rowers graduate and go on to row for Division I varsity programs. Art also coached sculling at Lower Merion High School and assisted at Bryn Mawr College for five years.

In addition, Art has assisted with a number of National Team crews in 2011, 2012, 2015, and since 2019. Most recently, Art worked with the 2019 USA Men’s Quad, the 2021 Men’s Olympic Team Quad, and the 2022 Women’s National Team Lightweight Quad rowing for Whitemarsh.

He has coached the Whitemarsh Masters for more than nine years.

Coach Margie has been a member of Whitemarsh Boat Club since 2008 and competed on the WBC Masters team for several years. She learned to row at Seattle Parks and Rec in 1993 and went on to row competitively with several clubs in the Seattle area including: Green Lake, Lake Union, Lake Washington, and Seattle Pacific University, before moving back to the Philadelphia area in 2006.

She began her coaching career in 2021 with the WBC Tech Team and moved into an assistant coach position with the Youth Program in 2023 focusing on novice and JV girls. She is also a coach and volunteer for We Can Row Philadelphia, a rowing program for breast cancer survivors, which operates out of WBC.

Susan Hermann Seybolt began her rowing career at the University of Texas in 1989, where she graduated with a B.S. in Kinesiology. She went on to train and compete primarily in sculling after college, holding a number of coaching positions in the greater Philadelphia area. She enjoys coaching at all levels, having worked at high schools, universities and clubs, including: Vesper, The University of Pennsylvania, Episcopal Academy, Lower Merion High School, and Drexel University.

She was the head coach of Germantown Academy for 14 years. For the past 15 years she has focused on coaching juniors and masters out of Whitemarsh Boat Club in Conshohocken, PA.

An active volunteer and member of the broader Philly rowing community, Susan has participated as an organizing committee member in multiple regattas and has won multiple medals with her teams over the past 30 years.

Coach Charles has been coaching girls rowing since 2019 as the Assistant Varsity Crew Coach at The Agnes Irwin School. He started his professional career in law, having earned his Juris Doctor in Environmental Law from Pace University School of Law. He transitioned to education after a few years in law firms and now teaches social studies at Merion Mercy Academy after earning a Master’s in Teaching from Villanova University.

At The Agnes Irwin School, he and his teams gathered a number of notable results, including:

2022 PSRA Kate Godwin Points Trophy
Stotesbury Cup Regatta
2022 – First, Girls Varsity Quad and Girls Lightweight Double; Second, Girls Freshman Quad
2019 – First, Girls Freshman Quad
SRAA National Championship
2022 – First, Girls Lightweight Double

At WBC, Coach Charles will be coaching the Junior Varsity Girls racing team.

Coach Tom has been rowing on boathouse row since 1985. He learned to scull in the summer after 8th grade at Penn AC.  He continued sweep rowing there at St. Joe’s Prep and moved next door to row at Penn for college. He coached the Prep freshman and novices to a championship season. More recently he coached the novices at Shipley for a year. He is a member at Undine. And He’s looking forward to competing in father-daughter, father-son and masters races this year. He’s very excited to be able to help coach at Whitemarsh.

Aaron Preetam is in his third year as an assistant coach for the U23 High-Performance rowing program at Conshohocken Rowing Center and the U23 USRowing M4X selection camp. He previously served as an assistant coach of the high-performance group at Penn AC in Philadelphia. Preetam has coached the U.S. U23 LW2x in 2023, U23 LW4x in 2022, U23 women’s double in 2021, the U.S. U23 men’s single in 2019, and the El Salvadoran U23 men’s single at their respective world championships. Additionally, he worked with Penn AC’s senior men’s quadruple sculls from 2019 to 2021, while assisting former head coach Sean Hall during his tenure. Prior to working at Penn AC, Preetam coached at various levels from scholastic to college programs for over 20 years. In 2013, Preetam founded the crew program at Germantown Friends School. His crews have garnered numerous City Championships and Scholastic National Championships since its inception. Preetam was especially proud of the accomplishments of James Wright, who won the U19 event at the inaugural World Rowing Indoor Championships and the men’s single sculls at the 2018 USRowing Youth National Championships. Preetam also found success with his crews at The Baldwin School, winning the lightweight women’s double sculls in consecutive years at Stotesbury and recording a second-place finish at the Youth National Championships in the same event in 2010. In addition to coaching, he teaches history and applied economics at Germantown Friends School.
Preetam got his start in rowing as a walk-on at Rutgers University in 1993 under the tutelage of Will Porter. Many of the lessons that he imparts to his current rowers were imprinted on him as a novice. He also grew immensely under the guidance of Mike Naughton and Joe Quaid. Preetam wrapped up his time as a national team rower for the Dominican Republic at Undine Barge Club after competing at the 2003 Pan American Games, three world championships, and the 2007 Americas Continental Olympic Qualifier. All the above was made possible with the love of and support of his wife, Carole Loeffler, and extended family. More recently, Preetam had the privilege of competing with his daughter, Graciela, and looks forward to many more father/daughter races and perhaps competing with his son, Bodhi, in the future.

Coach David started rowing in high school in Ohio. He rowed for 4 years in college at Bucknell University before moving to Philadelphia to continue rowing at Undine Barge Club. In addition to a long, competitive career which continues to this day, David has also had successful stints in collegiate and club coaching. At Bucknell, David coached several novice boats to League Championships. At the club level, David assisted in coaching many national champions and several boats that competed for the US National Team. David enjoys sharing what he knows and has learned about rowing with the next generation and look forward to developing that same passion for the sport in today’s young rowers.

Payment Information

The total price of the Winter and Spring Race Team is $2400.  Payment to secure your spot on the Spring Race Team is due by 12/02.  A second payment of $1400 will be due by 2/17.  A coxswain discount of $200 will be applied to all full-time coxswains, a part time discount of $100 will be applied to athletes who both cox and row.  For siblings on the team there is a $50 discount.

WBC believes that all athletes, no matter their financial status, should have the opportunity to row. To aid athletes in this position WBC is pleased to offer a scholarship for our Youth Programs. If you believe this applies to you or your athlete, please follow directions on this form. The scholarship committee will review these submissions and contact you about your scholarship status.

Please reach out to our Youth Administration Team if you feel this discount applies to your situation by emailing them here.  To join our mailing list to know more about this program please fill out this form.  If you have any questions please reach out to our Youth Admin team here.