This past summer three Redwood rowers traveled to Lithuania to take part in the Junior World Championships.

Seniors Julia Burgess, Camille Kisseberth, and Julian Goldman, all nationally ranked rowers, were chosen out of hundreds of top rowers around the nation.

Both Goldman and Burgess were a part of the men and women’s eight teams, respectively, while Kisseberth was in the spare pair.

The US men’s eight got fourth place in the semifinals and went to the B final. Overall, they came in sixth place out of 12 teams.

The women’s eight came in first place in the their heat, automatically qualifying for the finals.

“Going into the final, we kind of all went into it thinking we could get first, not because we were super confident but because we have been doing really well and we just kind of felt like we could of,” Burgess said. “But honestly looking back on it, I think our potential was third and then we had a bad race and we came in fifth.”

When there wasn’t a race, both the men and women were training double days — one practice in the morning and one practice in the afternoon.

“I really enjoyed it there, it was as if I was on a vacation. We stayed in this really nice hotel on a lake, the people were really nice and it was really nice weather,” Goldman said.

Surprisingly, there was more freedom then expected according to both Goldman and Burgess.

“ We were able to kind of just do whatever we wanted basically. We just hung out all day and went swimming in the lake and stayed in villas,” Burgess said.

According to Burgess there was almost no language barrier between the countries –almost every team spoke at least a little bit of English.

“We were there before the other teams so we were able to do our own thing for a little bit without having the distractions of the other teams around,” Burgess said. “As teams slowly trickled in it was awesome to see but also very intimidating.”

There was a total of 59 countries participating in the event.

Over the course of the two-week period there was a heat, a semi-final, a final for the men and a heat and a final for the women.

“After the final race you trade clothes with the other teams. Everyone had brought gear that they decided they didn’t want to keep, and we traded shirts for shirts,” Burgess said. “I ended up with a couple Australian things, a Netherlands shirt, a Serbian rowing hat.”

Travelling with each other all summer, the three of them became close with their teammates.

“It’s really hard to be so close with so many guys all summer and not become really good friends,” Goldman said.

The selection process began in late April and took a few months made up of hard training and lots of tryouts. All three seniors were given invitations based off their 2k time and essentially one girl/guy from each state would attend the nationwide selection camp.

“When I was invited, I kind of just wanted to see how I could do. I just went in there and went as hard as I could and did whatever I could but I didn’t expect to make the team at all, I really didn’t,” Burgess said.

Both Goldman and Burgess say they are excited for what’s in store this season and hope to improve the quality of their programs as well as their particular boats. Both intend to row in college as well.

They are considered to be part of the top 17 women/men rowers in the nation.

“Its also crazy being out there because you don’t realize how fast everyone is, it’s not like high school racing it’s crazy, people are crazy fast.”