Thursday, March 28, 2024

Local paddlers compete at slalom

no description

CORNWALL, Conn. — Local racers Chuck Wendler, Alden Henrie and Ava Harchak all had multiple results at the recent Covered Bridge Slalom held in Wes Cornwall, Conn.

Wendler, of Phillipsburg, won his specialty event, the Open Canoe singles master short, OC-1 Master Short, with a time of 210 seconds, but had some trouble in the OC-1 Medium event. Jim Smith of Norwich, Conn., took the gold in the Medium event in 180 seconds. Wendler’s time was 230 seconds.

Henrie, of Snow Shoe, took two silver medals. In his specialty, the C-1 Class canoe singles, his score of 123 seconds was bettered by Devin McEwan of Simsbury, Conn., who won the class in 117 seconds. McEwan is the brother of former Olympic medalist in C-1, Jamie McEwan.

Henrie also took second place in the OC-1 Open class with a score of 143 seconds. Jesse Cook of Springfield, Mass., won the class in 133 seconds.

Harchak of Julian, fresh from her scores at the Kenduskeag Slalom in Maine, continued scoring in three different classes. She took first place in the K-1W Cadet class (181 seconds) and in the K-1W Rec class 9186 seconds). Both runs were completed with zero penalties on all of the 22 gates.

At Kenduskeag her kayak women’s class was completed, penalty-free, in 255 seconds and the plastic kayak Rec class in 285 seconds, again with zero penalties.

In the C-1W class, women’s canoe, Harchak missed multiple gates on both her runs to end with a 517 second time. In those runs, she scored 50-second penalties on six gates for a total penalty score of 302, which, when added to her time of 215 seconds, gave her the 517 second-place results.

The winner of that class was Julia Rogers of Torrington, Conn., whose better run totaled 145 seconds.