Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 7, 1993 TAG: 9311040026
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Four years ago, Virginia Tech crew found itself in a quandary of the most significant sort: how to fulfill those definitions.
They had no boats to row.
"That spring, we had no money, no coach, no boats," recalls John Barbee, the only rower remaining from the club's inception. "We had T-shirts."
For a year, club members worked on conditioning, getting in shape on rowing machines and running, recalls John Onderdonk, the Tech graduate student who coaches the team now. A lot of people came and went.
Flash to four years later: 45 men and women, many ignorant of the sport before coming to a club meeting, have given themselves over to Onderdonk's tutelage, and in doing so have redefined their definition of "dedication."
And Onderdonk says, "As I get up every morning at five a.m. saying crew is fun, my dog George looks up at me and says, you're still doing this?"
It's about 37 degrees outside. It's 6 a.m. It's time to practice.
Two of Tech's men's crews gather at the gym. They pile into their cars, and make the 30-minute drive to Claytor Lake. The sun, still below the horizon, is dyeing the sky purple as they pull into the gravel parking lot.
One shivering team member, walking with the others toward the shore, is asked what he likes about the sport. "Not this part," he replies.
Groggy-eyed, cracking jokes, they gather underneath a tree, slip out of their sweat pants, and do a few warm-up stretches and calisthenics.
Then it's over to the trailer, each eight-man team lifting a shell above its heads on its coxswain's command. They trudge barefoot across the grass into the water. They're used it; it's during the spring practices when the water gets truly frigid.
The coxswains order them into the shells.
Both crews slowly make their way around the bend into the open water.
"Sometimes the fog's so bad, we turn around and go home," Onderdonk says. Not today, though.
On the lake, nothing moves, except for the 63-foot long fiberglass shells, and Onderdonk in a motorized boat, bouncing back and forth. He shouts at rowers, telling them to put their back into their stroke, get in time with the others, lower their hands.
For the rowers, "technique," is the word of import.
Theirs is a job of attaining precision, everyone in time, each man getting his stroke in and out of the water exactly as his teammates'.
"We train to get in shape, but we've just got that one stroke to perfect," he says. "We're just trying to get everybody to do everything at the same time."
The shells cut through the water, each man's eyes focused on the back of the rower in front, at each stroke the rhythm-shouting coxswain lurching with the boat.
Every rower has his or her own reason why they take on this grueling sport.
Most mention staying in shape. The workout stresses the legs and back muscles tremendously. Then there's the mental concentration.
"You learn to push yourself past your limits," says Brian Wiersema. "Mentally it's pushing yourself. Physically it's hard everyday."
"I can't explain why I still do it," says Andrew Phillips, coxswain for the varsity men's boat. "I freeze my butt off. I've got a constant cold throughout the season.
"You either love it or you hate it."
Being a part of the team, both on and off the water, attracts them.
The night before a race, Phillips says, they have a pasta party.
"We do everything together," Wiersema says. "We are our own fraternity."
Coxswain Jennifer Heere says she doesn't mind the early morning practices before classes. "It's really gorgeous out there [on the lake]. It's so quiet.
"It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of dedication."
"Crew is a sport for people who are obsessive-compulsive," says Helene Woolfolk "It's . . . the teamwork for the boat. We're willing to commit to that."
The teams have had to battle bureaucracy and a lack of bucks to get where they are.
Since it's a club, there are no scholarships. The team receives a little money from the school, and holds raffles and other fund raisers.
Tech helped pay for their first wooden shells - virtually beyond obsolete - in 1991, Onderdonk says. When practice began at Claytor Lake State Park, he had to call Richmond for the teams to be allowed on the water without life jackets.
In an article Onderdonk explained, "Crew had not been seen in Southwest Virginia and these oversized canoes with one hell of a set of oars were in violation," a game warden had told him.
They finally got two fiberglass boats - used - two summers ago. A used shell can cost $4,000, a new one, up to $25,000.
Most schools have boat houses to shelter their equipment and docks to shove off from. Not here. When the teams go to regattas, there's no money for hotel rooms.
Still, they get respect.
"We sleep on gym floors a lot," says coxswain Jennifer Heere. But, once in the race, "What happens on the water is the team; it's not the equipment."
The novice teams have excelled. Recently, the women's team defeated every boat but one in its division at a race in Pittsburgh, Onderdonk said. Last year, the men's novice boat beat 72 boats and lost to five.
The varsity teams - which under the rules each member must join after two semesters' experience - have not fared as well, mainly because they are competing against scholarship-based, experienced teams, says Onderdon, who rowed four years in high school and four at Skidmore College in New York.
The big race - "Head of the Occoquan" - happens this weekend in northern Virginia. The teams will look at it as a measure of their success.
"I try to be realistic," Onderon says. "I don't expect to beat Cornell, Brown or M.I.T," teams from the northeast, traditionally the hotbed of crew.
Still, "I like to win," he says.
Phillips, the coxswain, says regardless of whether they win or lose, "We're out there improving. We're out there racing. Most importantly, we're racing ourselves."
by CNB