Six Years of School Rowing Produces Inspirational Alumni | News

November 18th 2025

Rowing has gone from strength to strength since it was introduced to Bolton School under the direction of Mrs Jepson. It has been a Boys’ Division Senior Sport option for the last six years, in partnership with Agecroft Rowing Club in Salford. This has been extended to the Girls’ Division in the last couple of years.

A number of Boys’ Division students have gone on to achieve rowing successes after being introduced to the sport at Bolton School.

Lewis Daly (Class of 2015) in 2020 and 2021 completed two 24-hour rows to raise money for Bolton Hospice, raising over £6,500 across the two years and, in 2021, beating the British record at the time with a distance of 280,427m. Robert Harris (Class of 2020) continues to row alongside his medical studies at the University of Liverpool, and in the summer of 2023 became the President of the rowing club there. Barnaby Keogh (Class of 2023) is involved in rowing at the University of Durham, and as well as rowing for his college, Hatfield, he is the club’s Treasurer. He is currently completing a year abroad as part of his studies, but on his return he plans to trial for Senate, Durham’s higher level intercollegiate rowing team. Both Barnaby and Robert have separately competed in the prestigious Head of the River Race in London.

James Hopkinson (Class of 2022) went on to study at Oxford and, after successfully trialling for the University squad in the Lightweight programme, was selected to row in the Boat Race in London last year.

James looks back on his rowing journey so far, from starting to row at Bolton School to his experiences preparing for and competing in the Boat Race:

In September 2019 if you’d have asked me what I thought of rowing, you’d have probably received a typical non-descript ‘fine’. If you ask me the same question now, it’s a very different answer.

My first term of rowing with school was peppered with freezing cold, windy, and rainy afternoons in Salford Quays but we kept going and getting some outings to learn the ropes of this new school sport. After six months, just as we were getting the hang of Wednesday afternoon sessions, Lockdown started. It wasn’t until September 2020 when we finally got back out onto the Quays.

Having decided I quite like the idea of pulling on a stick to move a boat, I joined the Agecroft Rowing Club Development Squad. By far the youngest member of the group, I kept my head down trying to improve my rowing technique. My first race was on home water with a fellow Bolton School boy, Barnaby Keogh (Class of 2023), and after only one close scrape with a wall we’d officially finished our first race as a school. Later that season we competed at Trafford Head and won the U18s double sculls category: the first official Bolton School crew to do so.

Moving to university, I met an amazing group of friends through the Boat Club at The Queen’s College, Oxford. I got involved with rowing and coaching immediately, was elected as Men’s Vice-captain in my second term, a position I held until this year.

I have also taken on additional admin roles for the wider Oxford rowing community. I joined the Oxford University Rowing Clubs committee as Treasurer. This gave me the chance to experience the organisational side of running rowing events as well as giving me the opportunity to undertake a two-day powered boat handling course in the Bristol Harbour. Using this qualification, I have driven one of the safety boats at almost every race held in Oxford, giving me a front row seat for all the action.

During the holidays, I still enjoy going to Salford Quays and helping at Agecroft, whether that is coaching or rowing with my old squad when they are a person short. I owe a lot to Mrs Jepson for introducing rowing to Bolton School and so I’m always happy to help out with Wednesday afternoon coaching when I’m home.

In my third year at Oxford, I decided to trial for the University squad. Being relatively small for a rower, the Lightweight program was attractive and so I signed up. After a slightly shaky start to my season, I remained committed to the training program and began to see a steady improvement to my testing scores. The first major selection of the season came around with the Fours Head in London in November. I made it into one of the crews (what a relief) and this gave me the confidence to keep going and commit to the gruelling 12 sessions a week.

As I continued to improve under the watchful coaching eye of Team GB Olympic Gold Medallist Harry Brightmore, I found out I’d been selected for the Lightweight Trial Eight. Trial Eights is the first opportunity to race the full Boat Race course in London, usually against another evenly matched crew from the squad. We raced against one of the leading school crews in the UK, Latymer Upper School. Unfortunately, we lost this matchup, but we learnt a lot about how to deal with a nearly twenty-minute race in awful conditions.

In January I was selected to attend the Spanish training camp at the Cerlac centre in Ourense. After a 4am start at Stansted we made it to the idyllic location with hotel on the river and got settled in with a lovely calm afternoon session. Spending a week rowing three times a day, with the rest of the time either eating, sleeping or chatting with the rest of the squad, helped to cement the great environment cultivated in the group, and it helped solidify friendships with people I’d met less than four months prior.

In the lead up to the Boat Race, all of us in the selected lightweight crew were eating less and training harder, going to London most weekends for training races against larger clubs and schools, and using the GB training facility in Caversham for some final testing. Things were looking positive.

Race day arrived. We made our regular commute to our base in Putney carrying a few more nerves than normal. We got through the weigh-in process smoothly then sat and waited to boat. One final talk from our coach Harry and the doors opened; we were ready. The experience felt surreal as we walked through a packed crowd of friends and family. Although we ultimately lost the race, we were the fastest Oxford Lightweight crew to have raced in London.

I’ve learned a lot about myself through rowing, be it handling pressure, developing mental resilience, teamwork, and the discipline required to manage those early morning training sessions with the grit and determination necessary to win my seat in the Lightweight Blue Boat. I will carry all of that with me for the rest of my life, and I’ll always be proud to have rowed Dark Blue.

James Hopkinson