Three Lenox Student-Athletes Celebrate Their College Plans

LENOX, Mass. -- Two senior members of Lenox Memorial's crew program describe their sport of choice as mostly overlooked on the high school landscape.

 

But on Monday afternoon, it was front and center.

 

Isabella Pereira and Ben Westlake signed commitment letters to attend college and compete in rowing at Smith College and Marist University, respectively.

 

The pair, in a short ceremony in the high school's gymnasium, were joined by family, coaches and classmate Dawson Reber, who made a similar commitment to attend Springfield College.

 

Before attending to their paperwork, each of the 12th-graders listened as Lenox Athletic Director Patrick Colvin read the thoughts the student-athletes shared on a questionnaire he distributed prior to the ceremony.

 

"I've been rowing for five years, and during that time, the most common question I get is, 'What sport do you do?' " Colvin read from Pereira's statement. "When I tell people I row, they mostly always respond, 'What's that?'

 

"When I explain that I row for Lenox, they're usually surprised and ask, 'Lenox has a rowing team?' "

 

Pereira's written statement goes on to explain that while crew may not be a high-profile high school sport in Berkshire County, it is a major part of intercollegiate athletics.

 

In fact, intercollegiate rowing predates all other college sports, tracing its lineage to a race between Harvard and Yale in 1852.

 

Next fall, Pereira and Westlake will join that tradition.

 

And while Reber last fall helped the Lee cooperative football program make numerous headlines on its run to the Division 8 State Semi-Finals, Westlake agreed with Pereira that rowing provides opportunities to make a splash at the "next level."

 

"You see that a lot with most kids saying, 'What's crew? What's rowing,' stuff like that," Westlake said. "And then you go off to college and rowing is like the second-biggest team there because they have 40-something guys on the team."

 

Westlake and Pereira each talked about what they have seen first-hand about the college rowing programs the plan to join.

 

"They have a really nice community," Westlake said of the Marist program. "I found their rowing team really nice and engaging. They helped me a lot when I stayed overnight. They showed me around campus. They sat with me at lunch and dinner. The overnight stay was really welcoming. I enjoyed every second of it. And the campus itself is really beautiful."

 

The Poughkeepsie, N.Y., school also offers Westlake a chance to pursue his career goal by studying to be a physician's assistant, he said.

 

Pereira also talked about how academics factored into her decision-making process.

 

"It has everything I've wanted," she said of Smith, where she hopes to pursue a goal of becoming a doctor. "The biggest thing for me was the population and how tight-knit a community there was there. Smith has a population of around 3,000 people, so it makes the class sizes around 10 to 15 kids, and, for me, my academics always come first before my athletics. So I'm able to really get the connection with my professors and really get the one-on-one."

 

"Northampton, it's perfect. I don't know if you've ever been there, but it's such a charming town. It's amazing."