Before their debut in November, rowers on the new women’s lightweight team were teasing coach Al Acosta about his sorry excuse for a game face.
“I told them, ‘Just get to the starting line on time and don’t do any damage to the boats,’” Acosta recalls. “They thought it was a pretty funny inspirational talk, until they saw boats hitting bridges and running into one another,” he says. “And two ‘eight’ boats finished with only six rowers because two kids ‘caught crabs,’ lost their oars and jumped out.”
One of Acosta’s two crews crossed the line in 10th place out of 25 boats at November’s Newport Autumn Rowing Festival in Southern California. Not bad, he says, for a group of walk-ons with virtually no experience. “At the first informational meeting in the fall, the coach had to show a video of what rowing looks like, because most of us had never done it before,” says junior Leah Brunski.
As an NCAA-designated “emerging” sport that will earn full-fledged varsity status at Stanford next year, lightweight rowing is attracting women like Brunski, who weigh less than 135 pounds, played sports in high school and miss team competition.
The learning curve has been steep. Unlike the women’s open-weight team, which has been a varsity sport since 1986 and has 12 scholarships to recruit high-powered specialists, lightweight crew depends on attracting wide-eyed newcomers. They have to enjoy getting up at 5:30 a.m., and they have to be tough. “We’re looking for athletes who have good endurance,” Acosta says. “We can teach them how to row, and it’s pretty easy to get up to a basic level. But after that, there are tons of nuances that determine how far you go.”
In landlocked training sessions, crew members “erg”—row mile after mile on ergonometer machines in the gym—and race up and down the stadium bleachers to increase their cardiovascular fitness. On the water, they have to figure out how to “set,” or balance, the narrow, tippy boats, and how to synchronize their upper body and legs, while sliding back and forth and handling oars—not too deep, not too shallow, not too angled. As for “catching crabs,” which happens when a novice strokes at the wrong angle and the water grabs hold of her blade like a crab, sucks it against the boat, and snaps the oar handle up into the air? A big, embarrassing no-no.
Monday through Saturday, the 24 team members pour out of a University van onto the Redwood Shores parking lot that, someday, will be the site of a spiffy new boathouse. Almost before the coxswains can shout “Hands on!” the women surround the racing shells and are ready to roll. “I think the trickiest thing has been learning to put the boats in the water without slamming them down,” says sophomore Lizzie Epstein. “Most of us aren’t used to carrying a 60-foot, $30,000 piece of equipment over our heads—and that’s pretty intimidating.”
But carry they do, and within minutes of launching off the docks, they are headed for a distant channel marker. As nine pelicans on a nearby mud bar watched the parade on a recent afternoon, Acosta putted past in a motor launch, shouting encouragement through his megaphone. “Reach more horizontally, not toward your toes, to get a bigger scoop of water,” he yelled. “Then crank it!”
Silhouetted against the sun in their sleek shells, crew members clock off the miles as they prepare for the spring competition season. “Now it’s a question of perfecting our technique and fine-tuning the stroke,” Brunski says. “The training is grueling, and while it’s beautiful to watch eight rowers and the cox all driving toward the same goal, we have no idea what [the spring racing season] is going to be like.”
Not only that, says Acosta, but with no lightweight crew alumni—yet—the boats are without donors to be named after. “We have one grad student on the team,” he says, “and when she leaves in June, we’re going to hit her up for oars.”
