Rowing clubs to rumble on the water

The St. John's College Rowing Club will take on the Annapolis Rowing Club and the Annapolis Junior Rowing Association tomorrow during the 19th annual Lianne Ritter Memorial Regatta.

Spectators are guaranteed to see some dedicated athletes putting their hearts into a demanding sport, and can enjoy a continental breakfast for $5 while they're at it.

As evidence of their dedication, many of the rowers are on College Creek in the dark and cold every morning, practicing at a time when most people are hitting the snooze button and cursing the alarm clock. Members of Annapolis Junior Rowing practice in the same place, but come in after school ends for the day.

"It is an attempt not to cut into our study time or our social time; it makes you have to go to bed really early for college kids," St. John's junior Brooks Pendergast, a co-captain on the college club team, said Tuesday.

Pendergast, who was attaching the rigging to a 65-foot-long shell in the dark, said the St. John's club routinely starts practice at 6 a.m.

While that may sound early, the Johnnies are a bunch of pikers by Annapolis Rowing Club standards. ARC members, who tend to be older than the college students, hit the creek at 5:15 a.m., then go to their day jobs.

"We are a small group, but we do very well against much, much better groups," said ARC member Renee Bremer, a cancer research scientist for Michigan State University.

As proof of their accomplishments, Bremer said, ARC won three gold and three silver medals in August at the USRowing Masters National Championships, held on the Cooper River in New Jersey.

Though all three clubs share the St. John's boathouse grounds, none of them keep track of which team has won more of their yearly face-offs. But this politeness doesn't mean there isn't some rivalry between the groups.

"We'll run all over them," Bremer said, trash-talking with a wide smile on her face.

"We're tougher than they are," added ARC member Tara Neider.

ARC members actually seem impressed that St. John's students are willing to crawl out of bed early on a cold morning to train for such a demanding sport.

ARC member Liz Clarke, a network engineer for Verizon, volunteers as a coach at St. John's.

On this particular morning, the college rowers attended a debriefing where they went over their uneven showing last weekend in races against other college teams and clubs at a regatta in Virginia.

It was the first large race for some of the Johnnies, and Clarke offered the younger rowers a bit of advice: "To win races and do well, you have got to give everything at practice. … Don't worry about fatigue; just say 'I am not going to die, I am going to make it.' "

The students gave a knowing laugh - it turned out that a chant one St. John's coxswain used to motivate rowers during last week's race was "Liz is watching! Liz is watching! Liz is watching!"

About 40 students, or nearly one-tenth of the St. John's student body, are on the rowing team.

St. John's Athletic Director Leo Pickens, the school's head rowing coach, answered the obvious question: Does St. John's ever row against the Naval Academy?

Neither team would learn much from the experience, he said.

"That would be like St. John's going up against Ohio State in football," he said. "They are one of the premier teams in the country."

Still, Pickens, who graduated from St. John's in 1978, expressed admiration for his athletes.

When a St. John's one-man boat capsized in the wind and chop during last weekend's competition in Virginia, for example, the rower did not become demoralized. Instead, the novice took the unusual tack of getting back into the boat and finishing the course.

"That takes guts," Pickens said to the rower. "I applaud you for that."

Johnnies said one thing they especially like about their college is the way it encourages them to try new challenges, like rowing.

"I kind of decided when I came here that it was something I wanted to do; I was reading the 'Odyssey' at the time, and it inspired me," said St. John's sophomore Logan Dwyer of Flagstaff, Ariz.

Dwyer was busy rigging the boats in preparation for practice and tomorrow's race on College Creek, and he didn't have time to explain whether the over 3,000-year-old epic poem inspired him to take up rowing because so much of the story is set on water, or because the hero stays focused on his mission.

The annual Lianne Ritter Memorial Regatta, named for a St. John's College graduate student and sculling coach who died in a car accident in 1990, will take place from 8 to 11:30 a.m. tomorrow and will include about 12 races. The races are free and open to the public, and the best viewing area will be along the college's seawall near King George Street. A continental breakfast will be available for a $5 donation to help cover costs.