This past weekend, I had the opportunity to cover the NCAA women’s rowing championships at Melton Hill Lake near Oak Ridge as a freelancer for the Knoxville News Sentinel.
This was the first year since the NCAA began holding a championship event for the sport in 1997 that it was held in East Tennessee or anywhere in the state.
It was also the first rowing competition I had ever attended, but I found the event very exciting.
The University of Tennessee is one of only a small handful of schools in the Southeast that fields a varsity or scholarship rowing team. And the up-and-coming Lady Vols under head coach Lisa Glenn did well by finishing ninth in the competition for their first top 10 finish in the history of the program.
Although none was in the three boats that competed in the three-day competition, the Lady Vols’ team did have at least three Chattanooga area residents on its roster: senior letter winner Katrina von Peters of Red Bank High, freshman Leila Appel of Jasper and South Pittsburg High, and freshman Lauren Pryor of Chattanooga, who had graduated from high school in Texas.
The 2,000-meter races took place on a lake stretch of the Clinch River that veteran rowing observers praised both for being straight and for being visible in its entirety from any shoreline spot. That is apparently not the case at most rowing venues.
Of course, my eyes cannot see clearly 2,000 meters away, so I and everyone else depended greatly on the big screen monitors. A first-class announcer also traveled in a boat alongside the rowers and announced the place of each school involved.
I quickly became acclimated to such terms as one team having a three-seat advantage on another one, meaning the second-place boat’s bow was even with the rower from another boat who was three seats back. I also learned the difference between a grand final (the top final) and a petite final (for those boats that finished in spots 7-12 in the qualifying).
Most importantly, I learned that a repechage is a second race for those teams that did not finish high enough in an earlier heat for one of semifinal or final races.
Whenever the traveling announcer would say that one team would go into the lead or would be coming on strong, the few dozen supporters for that school would let out a loud cheer of approval and excitement.
For somebody like me who loves the simplistic excitement of any kind of athletic race, such frequent scenes were genuinely heart warming. I especially enjoyed when the boats would pass the shoreline spot where I was standing
The entertaining cheers from the supporters would be so deafening I could not hear what the announcer was saying. But that was fine with me.
The event started on Friday. On Saturday, the intensity and excitement were much more noticeable than on Friday.
And by Sunday, the cheering had grown to epic proportions.
I will never forget watching Minnesota, which was making its first appearance as an entire team, come from behind twice to win its two final races on Sunday after giving no sign during the preliminary qualifying that it was going to do that.
And watching the Golden Gopher faithful – with their Mississippi State-like cowbells – cheer as the two boats passed by the shore afterward as they were heading back to the unloading area was memorable as well.
In this age when intercollegiate sports competition has become a big business, such a seemingly innocent scene brought a smile to me.
Tennessee also gave the locals reason to cheer by finishing second once and third twice in its three petite finals. I could see an obvious excitement and look of contentment on Coach Glenn’s face afterward.
Although more schools seem to be fielding nationally competitive rowing teams, the Ivy League still is a force with which to be reckoned, even though it is no longer competitive nationally in about any other sport.
Brown, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth and Harvard – which still goes by the girls’ college name of Radcliffe – were among the small number of schools that qualified for the NCAAs.
The Ivy League schools also brought many parents and other faithful fans.
Earlier in the week I had interviewed John Murphy, the 23-year Brown coach, and I was surprised at how unlike a typically intense coach he seemed – at least on the surface. He wore blue jeans and a T-shirt and had an unassuming and laid-back manner about him in casual conversation.
On Sunday, I would be interviewing him again in a much different setting.
The race for the national championship came down to the six-boat varsity 8 grand final – the last race of the day Sunday - between Virginia and Brown.
In the NCAA Division I category, teams could enter their top varsity 8 boat (plus a coxswain), their second varsity 8 (which is like the second string), and one four-person boat. Scoring is weighted toward the varsity 8 and toward the grand finals.
In the varsity 8 grand final, whichever team won between Virginia and Brown would be NCAA champion.
As NBC News and political commentator Tim Russert might say, all that mattered as far as Brown was concerned was Virginia, Virginia, Virginia.
Brown had a little bit of a disappointing race by its standards, finishing only fourth. But Virginia finished fifth, so Brown won the national championship.
As excited Brown co-captain Rachel Dearborn said afterward, finishing fourth in a race never felt so good.
It was a fitting climax to a fun-filled weekend for this new women’s rowing fan.
John Shearer
Jcshearer2@comcast.net