Max Burget ’24 and James Dodman ’24 will be rowing for a world championship in Paris this summer.
Burget and Dodman qualified for the World Rowing Under 19 Championships on Wednesday after their standout men’s pair performance in USRowing‘s Under 19 National Team Trials at Nathan Benderson Park in Sarasota, Fla.
The World Rowing Under 19 championships will be held August 2-6 at Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium, which will be the home to the Olympic rowing competition during the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
Burget (stroke) and Dodman (bow) won a bronze medal for CHS at Sunday’s USRowing Youth National Championship, also at Nathan Benderson Park.
The pair remained in Sarasota for the national team trials, where they rowed out of the Buffalo Scholastic Rowing Association – Canisius’ home boathouse – and wore the BSRA’s blue-and-white diamond pattern.
As they did in the national championships, Burget and Dodman showed continual improvement in their performances. At the national championships, the Crusader pair had the fifth-best time after preliminaries and was fourth after the semifinals before surging to third in the final, finishing just a quarter-second behind second-place Orlando.
This week, Burget and Dodman were fourth in Tuesday’s time trial before surging in Wednesday’s final, taking second in a tight race, finishing just 1.5 seconds behind the Orlando Area Rowing Society (6:50.63).
The Orlando pair, however, decided to decline their spot on the U19 national team and Burget and Dodman accepted the berth.
Burget and Dodman earned the berth not just because of Orlando’s decision to decline, but because the Canisius duo met a competitive national team time standard.
In this week’s trials, which also included Under 23 national team races, U.S. crews not only needed to win their race but also needed to record times of 93 percent or faster of the published Competitive Time Standard in order to qualify.
Not every winner of the national team trials met the qualifying percentage; four of the 21 races were won by boats which had times that were not fast enough to advance to the world championships.
Burget and Dodman’s time of 6:52.04 was 94.5% of the CTS (6:29.50).
When the pair returned to Buffalo after midnight Wednesday night – along with coaches Ryan Brown ’23 and Peter Spira ’22 – they were greeted by a small but hearty group of red, white and blue balloon-toting supporters.
The pair’s performance competed a tremendous trip by Canisius rowers to Bradenton; the CHS four with coxswain of Liam Feeney ’25 (stroke), John Hart Jr. ’26, Isaiah Aljuwani ’25, Thomas Skowron ’25 (bow) and Noah Rajecki ’25 (cox) won the USRowing Youth National Championship on Sunday.
Action photos courtesy of USRowing
