It’s not easy to be a member of the University of Maine’s crew club.
Your team hasn’t reached varsity sports status; you only practice three times a week, your practices start at 6 a.m., 10 a.m. or 8 p.m.; the only rowing you do is on a machine; and the only water involved in most of your practices is bottled or from a drinking fountain.
“All the time, I’m going ‘Why am I doing this?’ The first year, we didn’t get on the water at all and last year, just twice,” said Carly Gaudette, who helped start up the club with Naomi Muhlberg. “It’s very hard to stay motivated and keep other teammates motivated. We’re all just like ‘Water, water, when do we get in the water?’”
Gaudette, Muhlberg and their 18 teammates are hoping for early April, but that’s up to Mother Nature.
“Between ice out and the start of finals, we don’t have a huge amount of time to get out there on the water,” said team volunteer coach Rob Cady.
In the meantime, they’re hard at work, at least twice a week, training at the new UMaine recreation center and — when weather allows — Pushaw Lake, the team’s unofficial practice site.
“This just shows how many people have surprisingly come out of the woodwork in this area who have an interest in crew, experience in it, or both,” said Cady. “A woman walked up to us and asked what we were doing at the rec center. We told her we were training for the team and she volunteered her camp on Pushaw to use as a staging area.”
It’s just another example of how things are starting to fall into place for this club team after a slow and tedious start two years ago.
Testing the waters
Naomi Muhlberg came to the sport of rowing and crew late, but what she lacked in experience, she made up for in zeal.
“I had only done it for 2½ years in high school and just loved it, but somehow managed to go to the only school that didn’t have a crew team,” said the Cherry Hill, N.J., native who came to Orono because she liked UMaine’s earth science department and because the tuition cost was even lower than in-state tuition in the Garden State. “So after a year I decided to start one up. I put fliers out all over campus to start one and had 40 kids come to the first meeting.”
The junior food science major has been the club’s president, chief, cook, and bottle washer along the way, trying to drum up interest and find financial support on and off campus.
“Yeah, it’s been a two-year effort, but it’s progressed a lot better than I could have ever imagined, especially this year,” she said.
The pace has really picked up the past six months as the team went from having two somewhat dilapidated single boats to four boats with a fifth on the way. The team also made another important addition: A coach.
True to form, even that development was random and surprising.
Longtime Orono resident Rob Cady’s wife Mary, who works in the UMaine library, struck up a conversation with Muhlberg and Gaudette last fall and they mentioned they were starting up a team.
“They happened to mention it to Mary, so they asked me about it last September,” Cady recalled. “Mary told them I’d rowed at prep school and in college, so they asked me if I was interested in coaching.”
Cady came aboard this past September and immediately put the 20 remaining team members — only one other of whom has any previous crew experience — on a weekly training regimen. He also has a weekly club officers’ meeting.
“They all practice on their own twice a week, at 5:30 a.m. Wednesday or Friday and 8 p.m. Tuesday or Thursday, and Sundays at 10 a.m.,” Cady explained. “Each month, they have to do a hard 1,000 meters on the timer and we have timed mile runs each month.”
Cady rowed six years at prep school before continuing at Boston University for four more years.
“The workouts are so much better with coach Cady,” said Muhlberg, a coxswain. “I think we all have more of a respect for it now that it’s more regimented.”
Not to mention supported and supplied.
“Last fall, we were able to get on the water twice, but we were only able to use singles because the fours needed some equipment fixed,” said Gaudette, whose previous crew experience involved one summer rowing as part of a high school advanced studies program.
Now the team has two rowing machines, two singles, two refurbished eights (8 oarsmen), and a double due to arrive next week. Now all they need is a way to transport their boats.
“We can’t transport our eights without a trailer, so for us to compete with other schools, that’s the next big thing we really need,” said Gaudette.
Finding other schools and competition isn’t the problem. Colby College, Bates College and Bowdoin College have already invited the UMaine club to compete in a CBB competition the last two years.
“I’m hoping we can compete against CBB schools, not at a varsity competition, but maybe have a home and home series each year,” Cady said.
Well, home and home if they can make a suitable home course.
“Stillwater isn’t wide enough and it’s too shallow. It’s also a little too curvy to use to race,” Gaudette said. “Plus you need a fairly flat, 2,000-meter course and it isn’t long enough.
“I just want to be in a race. I don’t care if we win or lose badly. It would be so great to get to that point and compete.”
Charting a course
The earliest the club will likely be able to hit the open water is early to mid April, but even though that means they have a fairly small window to get out and row before finals, that doesn’t mean Cady and his team aren’t thinking beyond the last day of class.
“I think it would be cool to have it be where that equipment gets used and doesn’t just sit around all summer,” said Gaudette.
“We’re looking to get publicity in order to encourage more sponsors and get at least eight oars and some other equipment and boats” said Cady. “And I’d like to generate more interest in the sport in this community.”
That includes financial support for the team, but Cady doesn’t see it as a one-way proposition.
“We want to open it up to have it feed into a summer program. We’d also like to build a boathouse on the Penobscot eventually somewhere. We’re looking for sponsors and a 16-foot section of dock to use as a launch site.”
That’s the long-range plan, but Cady said perhaps in the short term, they could have a summer program involving races on Pushaw.
“We’re thinking we could have community rowing June through August and we’re hoping to start that this summer,” said Cady. “Then in the fall, we’d look at having a hullabaloo where anyone wanting to row on a sliding seat can show up and go rowing at Pushaw.”
In the meantime, Cady and the team have visions of green grass, free-flowing flatwater, and sunshine in their heads.
“There’s nothing like being on the water like that. You sit so low, when you row in one of our boats, your seat moves and it’s such a different experience,” Gaudette said. “It’s the epitome of a team sport. Everyone has to move together at the exact same time and the slightest discord in rhythm can affect everything.”
It’s that team concept that has helped all the team members get through their landlocked training the last two years.
“The team atmosphere definitely helps. It’s a bonding kind of thing with all of us,” said Muhlberg. “I just like being on the water. It’s just so calm and relaxing.
“Time on the water, even if it’s just a few minutes, is better than none at all.”
Although time is running short for Muhlberg to see her concept turn into a competitive team, she remains hopeful and excited.
“I look at what we started with, which was absolutely nothing, and see what we have now, and I can’t help but be optimistic,” said Gaudette, a sophomore with a double major in chemistry and secondary education. “I’m confident saying that by the time I’m a senior, we’ll be involved in some kind of race.”
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