Melbourne’s Scotch College and Sydney Church of England Grammar School, better known as Shore, will provide a clash of the titans at the Wendouree-Ballarat Rowing Club regatta.

Shore has entered four crews, including a boat in one of the regatta’s blue ribbon events – the schoolboys’ eight open division one.`in which it will go head-to-head with Scotch.

Each school still has oarsmen in these crews who featured prominently in the national schoolboys’ coxed eight championship final in Sydney early last year.

Shore won the title, with Scotch 3.36 seconds away in third position.

Each is using the Wendouree Ballarat regatta event as part of their preparation for another tilt at the nationals, as are many other schools including Ballarat’s Head of the Lake crews.

Regatta officials have been inundated with entries, which have topped 620 for 141 events over two days of wall-to-wall racing.

Almost 1600 rowers will fill 2300 seats in the biggest regatta of the Ballarat rowing season.

These include 13 Ballarat City Rowing Club entries and four from the host club.

Ballarat school entries include: Ballarat Clarendon College 28; Ballarat Grammar School 35; Ballarat High School 19; Damascus College 36; Loreto College 19; Phoenix College 5; St Patrick’s College 20.

The regatta opens with male and female open, under-23 and under-21 singles and pairs 2000m time trials on Saturday from 8am.

The opening day program is scheduled to run until 5pm, with Sunday’s event beginning at 8am.