In absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia. 

“Do or do not. There is no try.”
                -Yoda, 'The Empire Strikes Back'

 “Our lives improve only when we take chances - and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.”
                -Walter Anderson 

“People ask me what I do in the winter when there’s no baseball (crew).  I’ll tell you what I do.  I stare out the window and wait for spring.”
               -Rogers Hornsby

 “Crew is the place where true happiness and agony collide.”
               -S. Spatny

 
1:  In The Beginning    

             The first season was a good time for Cleveland State Rowing.  We managed to find enough men and women to complete a full novice eight per sex.  Our team met for the first time on a Saturday and we all stood around evaluating the situation.  I’m sure the fact that our coach was identifying himself as a cox was weird to the others as well.  The old boathouse smelled funny and we were being taught how to row on old beat up ergometers.  After a short briefing and a signed waiver, we were ready to go.  We walked through the big steel boathouse past the assorted fours and eights to the back of the 8’s bay where the equipment we would be using was stored.  The Tom Hardie ’78 was not one of the newer boats in the boathouse, in fact I was convinced it was the oldest. 

“All eight line up on the Hardie”, said the coach.

He showed us how we were supposed to carry equipment and where to handle the shell (boat).  We managed to get the shell to the water in a clumsy unorganized attempt at looking like we knew what we were doing.  The fact that St. Ignatius High School (a championship high school crew) was standing there watching us struggle didn’t make it any easier.  This assorted bunch of strangers would be racing in a matter of weeks against other Cleveland colleges at the Head of the Cuyahoga. 

Coach Dan told me to sit in the stern most seat called stroke.  At that point I didn’t know the significance of stroke or any other seat.  After we learned the basics, we put in our first race piece.  We rowed the 5,000 meters from Marathon Bend to the finish line in the flats with much discomfort.  Our eight crashed the slide after every stroke only to drop all eight oars in at different times with no control for what felt like an eternity.  If I had known what set was I may have tried to achieve it, but for the most part, every stroke brought forth a different lean to our rickety loud shell.  My lower back felt like it was broken and the coach pulled up next to us in the launch only to tell us “good job, lets bring it home”.  We rowed the upstream 2K back to the dock and put the equipment away. 

For some reason I liked crew.  I kept coming back for more day after day and week after week.  We took a gold in our first ever regatta along with the women’s novice 8 at the HOTC 2000.  During our race, a St. Ignatius novice crew passed as one of their rowers actually took a hand off of his oar to wave at us.  This brought about a bittersweet taste of victory and personal embarrassment in the very beginning of our program.  Now if I could get my hands to stop bleeding.   

After the first race our coach started teaching basics again, set, catch, drive, hand heights, etc. there was a beauty to the Cuyahoga in the morning.  We witnessed some kind of serenity in the shimmering lights skipping across the water and the buzz of the city in the morning.  The simple repetitive nature of the sport let me escape from the reality of the tests and papers at school, my job, and everything else life had to throw at me.  It let me fly. 

Of course the other races came and as our coach said, the competition would get much better.  It was a bit of an awakening, we learned that we weren’t God’s gift to rowing.  Purdue boats A-J beat us along with most of the other schools at these regattas.  We sat out in front of Elkhart High School as Purdue Boilermakers charter buses pulled up for dinner.  It was intimidating that they needed as many charter buses as we had cars in our caravan to transport their rowers. 

The first season ended with a buzz of excitement for the spring season. 

 2:  The Dark Ages

             The first day of practice arrived for the spring and we had almost enough people (not men) to fill an eight if the coach cox’d.  The coach told us to go and rattle some cages to see where everyone was.  After a little investigation, we found that we had lost most of the rowers from the last season due to graduation, job conflict or college transfers.  We went from a team of novice 8’s to 4’s.  The men had a four when everyone showed up and the women scrounged for numbers until the racing started only to find themselves out of options.  The worst part of spring 2001 was at the Governor’s Cup in Charleston, WV when we raced in the open men’s category with a lightweight woman, a heavyweight woman, a lightweight man, and myself (a heavyweight man).  As fate would have it, we were in a qualifying heat with only 3 teams competing and the top three per heat advanced to the finals.  Not only did we get destroyed by our first heat, but the referee launches waked us and we had to do it again with more competition.  Needless to say we had quite a row in the Finals.  I guess I kept telling myself I would have a full crew next fall, and that idea got me through that day and the rest of the season.  I had a beer in my hand less than 5 minutes after I was out of the water. 

3:  Ups and Downs 

          The next few seasons were marked by a lot of short lived new rowers and a few who stayed.  The ones who stayed have been good to the team even up to the present, and this is what holds teams like this above the water.  The women’s team saw an 8 in the second fall of our team’s history with so much promise it was unbelievable.  Viking Crew was able to hold onto one of the whole 8.  The women who stayed, stayed through some really bad seasons where they essentially had to row with other teams, men or whomever they could find.  Now they have better times ahead.  With some new additions over the winter, the women have something to look forward to. 

            We have had a few guys from the start and added some very important men along the way.  This year is the most promising I’ve ever seen.  We have some really dedicated novice men and the older guys are really working to get better.  Our returning numbers from fall alone indicate some very positive team improvements. 

 4:  Future 

          We can only guess what the future holds for Viking Crew.  It all depends on how many people enjoy rowing with us, nothing else.  Of course winning is everything to me and I am doing everything in my power to make winning any race a possibility/ reality.  The truth is not all people want to win that bad, so for now I am just hoping that I have enough friends who like to row so I don’t have to buy a single.