Stoked by their winning strokes

Gary Fallesen
Staff Writer

(October 7, 2004)
     The clowns stopped clowning around and the jugglers dropped what they were doing when the University of Rochester shell appeared less than one-half mile from the finish line at last year's Stonehurst Capital Invitational Regatta.
     All eyes were on the eight-person boat that was about to accomplish something that hadn't been done since 1991: a rowing victory on home water.
     "Everyone on that side of the river was cheering for us," Amy Huang, a UR senior returning from the winning women's light-weight eight crew, says as she points across the water from the Genesee Waterways Center on the west bank of the Genesee River.
     Though thousnds of people might be verbally enjoying a Rochester River Romance weekend in Genesee Valley Park, it is silent on the water.
     "You don't even hear anyone," says UR captain Lisa Saladino, a junior who also rowed in that triumphant boat. "You just feel it.
     "When we came under the foot bridge (750 meters from the finish) it was so amazing. It's your river."
     The regatta that will be held for the 16th year on Sunday attracts some of college rowing's elite. National champion Harvard will be there, along with Ivy rivals Brown and Yale. There are other major players (Syracuse and Wisconsin) and New York schools (including Buffalo, Dowling, Hobart, and Ithaca) that accept invitations from regatta hosts UR and Rochester Institute of Technology.
     Imagine traditional college football powers Southern Cal, Oklahoma and Miami coming to town to play UR, St. John Fisher and SUNY Brockport, and you have an idea what the Stonehurst is about.
     "People don't appreciate that we have the top teams in the country," says coach Will Greene, a UR graduate and former Philadelphia lawyer who also directs the rowing program at the Genesee Waterways Center. "They realy can't tell the difference between the fastest crew in the country and some midlevel school."
     Spectators can see about 100 boats from nearly 30 colleges on the water during the course of the day. But it is only a taste of the rowing scene.
     "There's a separation: over there and over here," Greene says, referring to the east side of the river. "That's the spectator side. There's a family atmosphere. Over there, you have jugglers and clowns. You get a great view of everything. But there's an intensity on this side that the spectators don't see."
     They can witness what appears to be effortless motion.
     The best rowers make a difficult sport look easy.
     "You've heard of a runner's high? There's definitely a rower's high, too," says Huang, a biomedical engineering major from Kingston, Ulster County.
     It comes when your team which starts 10 seconds behind the boat in front ot it, "walks through" (rowing vernacular for passing) a rival shell. UR did that to Ithaca last year, a moment Saladino remembers well.
     Huang isn't able to recall anything from the race.
    "You start," she says, "and the next thing you know ...."
     You're finishing first in the women's lightweight eight, much to the deligh of the spectators on the other side of the river. The UR women, who will move up to the collegiate heavyweight eight this weekend, enjoy the opportunity to row on home water. It is a feeling shared with friendly rival and regatta co-host Rochester Institute of Technology.
     "Our friends from school, who don't know what we do every morning, come to the race," says Saladino, a neuroscience major from Utica who joins her teammate on the water from 6 to 8 a.m. six days a week.
     "Rochester used to be really big in the rowing world," Huang says. "It's kind of grown away from here. But every fall all the schools come here. It feels good when you seem them all camped out over here."
     It feels even better when you have a chance to join the elite as the winner of one of the six races. Even if you don't hear the cheers of the home crowd or remember the spring to the finish line that they have witnessed.
     The buzz from the rower's high will linger in the Genesee River air long after the regatta end.

Gary Fallasen is our outdoor writer. Besides finding him on the water, he can be reached at GFallesn@DemocratandChronicle.com or (585) 258-2454

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