April 6, 2006

GW Rowing Plots Course for Success

BY FRANK BROOMELL

“Real athletes row, the rest just play games,” says a popular slogan in the rowing world. Rowing is a sport that requires the highest amount of dedication and hard work from its athletes. An article from ESPN the Magazine described, “The athlete’s anaerobic threshold is the point at which the body’s muscles have exhausted their oxygen store and start burning other fuel. For regular folks, reaching that threshold is quitting time … . Rowers cross their anaerobic threshold with that first stroke. Then there are 225 more to the finish line.”

From early morning practices on the river to winters spent on the rowing machine known as the “erg” — short for ergometer, a device that measures the amount of energy or work performed — it is clear that rowing is not a sport for those looking for an easy time. It is no surprise then that the formation of the modern crew program at The George Washington University also took a good deal of hard work from the athletes who brought it about.

In the fall of 1955 a group of GW students approached the athletic department about forming a crew program. They left rejected. Undaunted, they formed the George Washington Rowing Club, elected Bob Moore as their president, and turned to the student body for support. Using funds raised from a fraternity open house party sponsored by the Inter-Fraternity Council, the GW Rowing Club purchased a used boat from the Naval Academy. The club found a coach in Ron McKay, and participated in its first race May 12, 1956, at Haines Point. They lost to George Washington High School and Washington-Lee High School. Still, the club persisted. The following year it moved to the Potomac Boat Club in Georgetown and hired Fred Maletz as its head coach.

In order to raise interest in GW crew Maletz decided it would be necessary to expand the local competition. He headed over to Georgetown and convinced several Georgetown students to come out for crew by offering some equipment to get started. On May 17, 1958, GW defeated Georgetown and a rivalry was born. That race formed the foundation for what would become the DC Area Championships today.

In 1959, crew became an official varsity sport at GW and the program moved to the Thompson’s Boat Center. Sandy Morrison, a founding crew member, said the team’s biggest hope, “was that it would develop into a full-fledged sport with University support.”

In the 50 years since crew began at GW, the program has grown into a successful rowing team. It has won medals at several top rowing competitions such as the IRA National Championships, Dad Vail Regatta, and the San Diego Crew Classic. One GW alumnus, Aquil Abdullah, ’95, has gone on to participate on the United States National Team. This year, the rowing team is looking to win the Eastern College Athletic Conference Championship, the league in which GW participates. Member schools include Michigan, Trinity, West Virginia, Colgate, and Boston College. Men’s Coach Greg Myhr, in his first season at GW, hopes to bring six boats to the IRA National Championships. He believes it is “incredibly important for a team on the verge of becoming big-time [to allow] its athletes to see what the entirety of a season is like.”

The women’s program has been even more successful. Named a varsity sport in 1976, the seeds for women’s crew were sown in the years leading up to that point. In the fall of 1971, several women learned to row from several of the men’s crew members. During that winter the men’s coach, Art Charles, invited four women to participate in the men’s winter training. In the spring of 1972, the women’s team entered its first race against the Vesper Boat Club in Philadelphia. By the 1973 season, the women’s program blossomed. It had two boats and began to win races against colleges such as Washington College, University of Virginia, and Georgetown. Like the men’s program, the women would see success in the IRA National Championships, and the A-10 and Dad Vail regattas.

In more than 30 years of women’s rowing, eight GW women have gone on to compete at the international level as members of the US National Team, including Jen Edwards, Linda Miller, Christine Collins, Michelle Knox-Zaloom, Tina Brown, Molly Hoyle, Sarah Bergeron, and Shannon Hapgood. This year’s team looks to build on a Varsity 8 that last year had several sophomores on it, as well as the success of the past two years. Going into the future, GW rowing hopes to increase interest in rowing and allow GW to successfully compete with the top-tier programs in the country. “Given the type of university and the type of student-athletes we have [there is] no reason we can’t bring GW up to the next level,” said Women’s Coach Rob McCracken, who is also in his first year as a head coach at GW.

Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu