The Humboldt Bay Rowing Association will send one of its junior teams, the Girls Quadruple Sculls, to the United States Rowing Youth National Championships in June.

The sculls team, which consists of Eureka High senior Elizabeth Pierson, 10th-grader Jean Sack, Arcata High sophomore Lissa Daugherty and Arcata High junior Shenae Bishop, beat out 11 other teams at the Southwest Junior Rowing Championships in Sacramento last weekend to take the bronze medal.

And by finishing in the top three at a championship regatta event, the HBRA earned the right to send a junior team to nationals for the first time in its four years of existence.

HBRA head coach Adrienne McConnell said the competition in Sacramento was intense and made the finish of her girls sculls team all the more gratifying.

“The defending national champion, Long Beach, won the event, and two of their girls are on the junior national team,” McConell said. “We were racing against one of the fastest teams in the country and we feel if we can hang with them, we should be competitive on a national scale.”

Although the nationals in Cincinnati will not be held until June 13 and will run through June 15, Pierson showed her dedication to her teammates that she has been competing with since the HBRA’s inception in 2004.

Pierson decided to forego her imminent graduation ceremony at Eureka High so that she could participate in the grueling six-days-a-week practice schedule preceding the championships and this came as no surprise to McConnell.

“She decided that if it came down to nationals or graduation, she wanted to be there with her teammates,” McConell said. “Competing means a lot to her.”

McConnell added that while she hopes Pierson and her teammates are able to do well in Cincinnati, she is proud of them no matter what happens.

“We’d love to place and earn a medal, but I’m very proud of what they’ve accomplished so far,” McConnell said. “They’ve worked very hard and earned the chance to compete at nationals.”