Just before five Vashon high school girls slipped into their shell for the row of a lifetime last weekend, their coach Sam Burns gave them some final words of support.

“Relax and execute,” he told them.

They did just that, said Avalon Koenig, one of five girls in the boat at the regionals competition in Vancouver, Wash., rowing with powerful strokes even as they trusted a game plan they had practiced countless times.

Now, she and the rest of her boat are headed to nationals — the first time Vashon’s junior crew team has sent a girls’ boat to the high-profile event and a remarkable achievement for the Island’s small, tight-knit rowing community.

Indeed, it was a heady moment when the girls — rowing as a junior women’s varsity coxed quad — placed second in the final race for their division on Saturday, earning themselves a berth in Cincinnati, where the USRowing Youth National Championship will be held June 11 to 13.

“We were screaming and kissing each other,” Koenig said. “And the parents were crying. We were all just bawling. It was insane.”

The victory was made even sweeter by another remarkable win last weekend: The junior men’s lightweight coxed four — a team of four high school rowers and a coxswain — also placed second. They too are headed to nationals.

Steve DeWalt, a senior and a member of the boat, said the victory meant a lot to him — the culmination, he said, of five years of rowing. “It’s really exciting,” he said.

Wade Hankin, another senior rower in the winning boat, said they did well in part because of the spirit of independent determination the rowers have cultivated over the years.

“We weren’t doing it for the club. We weren’t doing it for the reputation. We were doing it for ourselves,” he said. “We tried our best, and it worked well.”

By regional standards, Vashon’s club — a junior crew team comprised of high school students and a masters team made up of adults — is a small one. All told, 33 kids compete on Vashon — a fraction of the size of some of the big clubs in Seattle, Tacoma and Portland, said Joanne Kicinski, who’s been an active member of the Vashon crew team for the past seven years.

But the success they’ve experienced this year has been remarkable, she and others said. The team is sending nine high schoolers to the national rowing competition in Cincinnati — Koenig and her teammates Marja Haflinger, Laney Williams and Meaghan Connors; DeWalt and the rest of his crew, Thane Gill, Tim Hansen and Wade Hankin; and the coxswain for both boats, Olivia Sayvetz. What’s more, five members of junior crew are headed to to USRowing National Camps — Williams and Sayvetz, as well as Emmie Kehoe, Mia Croonquist and Will Kicinski. (See story, page 20.)

Junior crew has sent boats to nationals twice before — a four-man boat five years ago and a one-man boat four years ago. This year, with nine headed to nationals and five to national camps, about a third of the team has earned national attention in the competitive world of rowing, Kicinski said.

“It’s a phenomenal number of kids from our tiny Island,” she added.

What’s more, this year’s strong showing comes after a significant transition for the small team. For four years, junior crew was coached by Lucas Ridinger, a strong and beloved coach who some say brought the team to a new level of athleticism and achievement.

Last year, however, he decided to leave Vashon, opting to coach at a larger program — a move that surprised some members of the junior crew team and left many of them feeling bereft, Kicinski recalled. They decided to tap into the University of Washington network of rowers in their search for a new coach and were amazed to discover Burns, a former UW rower with some world records under his belt. What’s more, he was living on Vashon in his family’s summer home, taking a year off before pursuing his dream to get into medical school.

“We saw his resume and I laughed and said this is a joke,” Kicinski recalled.

But Burns was quite real — and in many ways, he was exactly what the young team needed, Sayvetz, the coxswain, said.

“There’s no way we could have done it without Sam,” she said.

Burns, who had never coached before, worked the team hard, often on land, where he had them do weight-training and other strengthening exercises. He brought a lot of technique into the picture, helping rowers understand and perfect their stroke. He also helped them attain a mental attitude that Sayvetz said made a powerful difference for both the girls’ and the boys’ boat.

Burns is calm, focused and quiet, she said, an attitude he worked to instill in the team.

“Calm, controlled and ready for it — he’s made that a principle of our crew team,” she said.

Sayvetz said that in many ways it’s remarkable that the young team will be fielding two boats at nationals. The season was hardly flawless, she said. In fact, turnout was so low this year that the girls were able to form only one boat, she said.

“We were skeptical throughout the season, because we had such a small turnout,” she said.

But the five girls in that one boat clicked, she said. And the boys, who had been rowing together for years, gained more confidence.

In the end, when they headed to Vancouver, she said she knew the two boats had the strength and skill to win — as long as they kept their cool, stayed relaxed and maintained their focus. Now, she hopes to work with Burns to bring that same mental preparedness to Harsha Lake outside of Cincinnati.

“Our times at regionals are very competitive,” she said. “I think we have a good shot at placing at nationals, which is a huge deal.”

Car wash

A car wash to help the team raise the money it needs to send the rowers and their coach to the national crew competition will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 22, in the Vashon Island Plaza parking lot.

Tax deductible donations can be sent to Vashon Island Junior Crew, P.O. Box 254, Vashon, 98070. Put “nationals fund” in the memo box.