Recreational rowing: Crewing and sculling are making a splash

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March 26, 1998

Recreational rowing: Crewing and sculling are making a splash

By GREG JOHNSTON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

What would make eight adult women eager to wake before dawn three days each week and work out almost until they're weary -- often in cold, wet and windy weather?

Fitness and good health, for sure. But more importantly, an intense camaraderie created by the interdependence of a crew.

And a lighter-than-air feeling captured fleetingly.

"It's total synchronicity, eight people all together," explains Mari Jalbing, 47, a member of the Seattle Yacht Club's women's crew. "It's a very elusive feeling, but once you've experienced it, it makes up for 1,000 bad rows.

"It feels effortless. You have the feeling of flying. Your blade cuts the water at the exact same time as everyone else's."

Adds Roberta Watterson, 54: "Many of us think of it as a journey or quest for that perfect stroke."

It is a quest that more people in the Puget Sound region, young and old, are seeking.

Rowing has been a big sport competitively in the Seattle area for decades; in 1936 the University of Washington's eight-man shell team won Olympic gold in Germany. In recent years, however, the number of rowers here has swelled with people interested in the sport as much for recreation as competition.

"It's grown tremendously, especially in the Northwest, in the last couple years," says Wilma Comenot, a rower and operations manager of the Pocock Rowing Center on Lake Union, the base of the yacht club's crews and those of several other clubs.

Much of the growth has come from women, who in years past did not have the opportunity. School-age girls and women are taking advantage of federally mandated Title IX programs.

"It's something new for girls," Comenot says. "We don't understand the growth of it from women 44 and over. We have pondered this for a long time."

Jason Frisk, manager of the Green Lake Small Craft Center, jointly operated by the Seattle Parks Department and the Green Lake Crew, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, noted that there are about a dozen clubs or rowing centers in the Puget Sound region.

"In the last four years, there have been three new boathouses in Seattle, and we're still able to fill our programs," he says. " There's a lot of tradition here. It's a great activity for kids. They get addicted to it."

Those would be the Pocock Rowing Center, funded by the family of the late and legendary Seattle shell-maker George Pocock, the Lake Washington Rowing Club and the Lake Union Boathouse. In addition, two years ago the Lake Sammamish Rowing Association established a boathouse at Marymoor Park in Redmond.

No one keeps statistics on the number of rowers in the Seattle area, and its popularity has not exploded in the manner of, say, snowboarding. But about 300 people row out of Pocock, and 200 each out of Green Lake and the Mount Baker Rowing and Sailing Center, another Seattle Parks facility. Add in the other boathouses and college crews, it's easily in the thousands.

Many members of the yacht club's women's crew say they initially began rowing for fitness, but discovered the sport was much deeper than they ever anticipated.

"It is so unimaginable to people who haven't done it," says Jalbing. "It's extremely physical, one of the most total-body activities. But it is also incredibly mental."