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University Daily Kansan / Monday, November 3, 1986
7
Sports Monday
Members of the KU men's novice crew practice on the Kansas River. The team is preparing for the Class Day races Saturday in Topeka.
Crew popular with Kansas students
By HEATHER FRITZ
Associate sports editor
When men's crew captain Scott Long first came to Kansas three years ago, he knew he wanted to be involved in athletics. During enrollment, he went to the rugby table at the Union, but the player sitting there had a broken nose.
"I went to the creel table, and they looked in pretty good shape," he said.
Thus, a lifestyle was born.
Long is one of about 175 men and women the KU crew. These students spend about three hours a day practicing and training and countless weekend hours raising money to pay for participation on the team. Because crew is a University club team, our fundaments, funds given by the University are small and more must be raised by the students.
But to Long and most other team members, the hard work and sacrifices are well worth the effort. The sport makes it worthwhile, they
"I love the feeling of rowing well," Long said. "It's indescribable. There's just no other feeling like it." And that is why they do it.
Crew training alone would be enough to discourage many. Some members either begin practice or lift weights at 6 a.m. Afternoon practice includes land work with weights and rowing machines and an hour of rowing on the Kansas River.
Rowing classifications include weight restrictions, so diet is another factor.
But rowing gives students a chance to get in shape and stay in shape. Crew members pride themselves on the fact that anyone who wants to be on the team can. There are no cuts. Crew is one of the only ways — except for making a varsity team — that KU students can compete against top collegiate teams. And despite crew's lack of student support, money and equipment, Kansas often wins.
Kansas has won the prestigious Heart of Texas regatta in Austin the last two years, and it has beaten Wisconsin, one of the country's top crews. But still, rowers feel they don't get the credit they deserve.
"We go out east and all they know of Kansas is the Wizard of Oz and I am a native American."
That may change. Rowers and coaches think they can this year field with the Nets.
Crew coach Cliff Elliott said, "For me as a coach and the rowers, this should be the most exciting part in training." He watched it grow, stabilize.
Elliott and his wife, Libby, who coaches the varsity women rowers, have nurtured the team into one of the best programs in the Midwest. And they have done it without a lot of support.
Kansas' youth has been one of its financial downfalls. Many crew programs around the country are financed in large part by alumni. The KU team, founded in 1978, has not been able toough to build much alumni support.
That leaves present rowers to shoulder the burden. Team members pay dues — $45 this semester — as well as all their travel and room and board expenses at regattas. Most also buy team sweatshirts and sweatpants, although those are not required. Members have paid as much as $500 a year to participate on the team.
'We go out east and all they know of Kansas is the Wizard of Oz and Danny Manning.'
— Scott Long Men's crew captain
"It's a tremendous hardship on the students." Ciff Elliott said.
Sophomore Lanette Wickham, who rows on the varsity women's boat and coxswains for a men's boat, is a member of the team to her response to the money problem.
"It would be nice if we could get more support," she said. "It's a change in our lives."
As hard as it is just to raise the money, it also takes time away from practice. KU usually takes the fall for the reason that he doesn't race until the spring.
"It comes down to raising money for the program or practicing for medicine."
Each year, Kansas Crew has to request financing from Student Senate. Last year, crew was allotted about $2,500 in the regular budget and $11,000 in a supplemental budget. The amount they are about $300. This includes Elliott's salary and the $9,000 rent the team pays on its boathouse.
The rowers use the money from Student Senate for new equipment. Last year's allowance went toward oars and cox boxes, which are amplifiers for the coxswains.
Depending on the point of view, Kansas Crew is either short on equipment or long on team members.
But the team must also pay for repairs and upkeep of the equipment.
"Without that help, we wouldn't be anywhere close to where we are now." Elliott said.
"Right now we have enough equipment for one program," Elliott said. "We're trying to run four programs. The hazard is we're spreading
Kansas has men's and women's novice and varsity programs, with lightweight and heavyweight divisions in each.
ourselves too thin."
"While they're possibilities, I don't think they're good possibilities for what we're trying to accomplish on a student sports club," he said. "The possibility that (rowers) can always fit it to the first boat is always there."
The team could limit either the number of programs it offers or the number of students it accepts to fit them. The team might refuse to consider those options.
"I have no inclination to limit the program. I'd rather try to keep working through the difficulties and try to provide all of them. Whether somebody is a good athlete or not, I think they should have the opportunity to try."
One common question is why so many students would spend so much time and money in a sport that gets so little recognition.
The key to that, perhaps, is to understand the sport itself.
Part of crew's appeal is its elitist image. Crew has traditionally been an East Coast, Ivy League sport; it is something that not everyone does. That is one reason people like it.
Many think it also is an elegant, classy sport. Rowers say it is the best.
"You ask yourself 'why am I doing this' but you keep going." Wickham said. "There's just something about it. All eight lines (oars) are going together. It's like harmony. You're all on one level."
Elliott, who started rowing because he was "too slow and couldn't jump high enough to play basketball," calls the sport compelling.
"There's a natural attraction to water activities," he said. "In rowing, to be really good you have to be in tune with the elements, equipment, water. When you are that way, you're working under your own power and you see the speed and you say I did that."
The best rowers usually are tall, because taller people have a longer stroke, accelerating the boat more than shorter people. Elliott says he doesn't care how good a runner or someone is, as long as they work hard.
"I try to get the eight people out there that want to work the hardest," he said. "The harder you work at it the better you should be."
Coxswains must be small. They sit hunched over in the bow of the boat facing the rowers. They are, as Wickham says, "the brain of the boat." Most coxswains are women because of the weight limits.
Long said rowers today still may have the elitist attitude.
"You have to be somewhat egotistical to be a rower," he said.
"You have to have eight guys in there who think they are good. It demands a lot of confidence. You really have to sport it because it's very monotone."
"They're different people. I don't know ifrowing causes that or ifdifferent people are attracted to rowing."
It starts at the boathouse near the corner of Seventh and New York streets.
The boathouse is really an old warehouse. The windows are broken and snow comes through in the winter. As many as 80 students will be waiting there; nine will be using the ergometers.
Rowing practice is different than that of any other sport.
Ergometers, or rowing machines, are used for land rowing practice. The rower sits on the seat and slides back and forth, pulling the handle, which spins the wheel in the front of the machine. When all nine rows are completed and the athletes stand around talking, he noise is deafening.
Then it comes time to start, and the rowers troop down to the river. If not all the boats are already on the water, eight rowers will carry a racing shell on their shoulders down the steps of the boathouse and down the hill to the water.
They walk out onto a wobbling dock and set the boat in the water. They take their shoes off and put one foot in the boat with a hand on each side of the boat and the other foot on the dock. As the coxswain calls out the signals, they push off, sit down and tie their feet into "shoes" built into the bottom of the boat. The current takes them downriver, and they pick up their oars and start to work.
Because the team has so many members, there are three different practice times. As one boat comes in, the rowers climb out and others climb in. During the first part of practice, Elliott's job is that of a traffic coordinator. He watches from a small motorboat, yelling for the rowers not to hit another shell with their cars. Because two boats come in as another one is leaving the dock, this is difficult.
Sport of paradoxes brings pain, beauty
Sometimes there are problems. At a recent practice, Elliott had to fix a broken oak lock on the water. Also, when the river is up, as it has been late, debris, such as logs, gets in the way. When the river is low, the rowers have to gigzg down the river to avoid hitting sandbars.
But once out on the water, crew practice can be beautiful to watch. The varsity rowers row in unison; the novices row almost in unison. The coxswains' calls carry over the river, as do the quiet plop of oats hitting the ground.
By BRIAN SNYDER
Sports writer
There is more to rowing than meets the eye. One stroke can win or lose a race for a boat.
Editor's note. Brian Snyder normally isn't given the chance to write about the KU crew, but in this piece he tells about his firsthand experience as a two-year member of the team.
The idea that rowing is dominated by stuffy Ivy Leaguers and East Coast teams is a misconception. That used to be true, but it isn't any longer. Emerging, competitive crews from all over the country have put this myth to serious test.
Kansas is no exception. This year, more than 160 men and women have joined Kansas Crew, which can only make coaches Cliff and Libby Elliott's hopes for the future skyrocket.
The reasons for the growing popularity are varied. To begin with, rowing is a sport of paradoxes.
I am convinced it is the ultimate team sport, for the success of a boat depends on all the rowers performing as one.
But it is also the loneliest sport I've known. The physical pain of a workout is topped only by the indescribable feeling of winning a race.
Crew is a student club and is supported mainly by dues and money raised by students. Last year I spent almost $500 to participate. These students take the money and heart into a program which only guarantees hard work.
It can be a sport of grace and beau-
tility and a sport of terrible
awkness.
Although the financial commitment might seem quite high, I think time is the biggest investment these athletes and I make.
There's the time learning to row. The learning process involved inrowing is slow for something that looks so effortless and simple. After all, what's so difficult about rowing a boat?
There are hours of sitting in a boat with eight other novices wondering why the fool in front of you can't keep the boat balanced.
I was convinced, in my first weeks of rowing, that every person in the boat, except me, was completely injured. I was very surprised and alarmed; the situation was probably the reverse.
the 20-minute trip back to the dock, my mind wanders. The rowing team is on the ramp.
Cliff circles the shell in the motor-boat, yelling instructions. It's hard to hear it, but it's clearly being used.
Although I shouldn't, I start thinking of anything but rowing. Questions possibly come up.
Will I ever be warm again? Will I ever be dry? How close are we to the dock? Why can't that jerk in the
See CREW, p. 8, col. 1
eighth seat keep from splashing me with water? Doesn't he know the wind chill is 20 degrees? What's for dinner tonight? Do the muscles on my back move like the guy's in front of me?
Over a year's time, the back of the roower sitting in front of me becomes as familiar as my face in the mirror. My shoulders are covered with leathery calluses.
Frustration plays a major part in the rowing process. Balancing a boat with eight rowers and a cossain isn't easy, even for experienced rowers. Eight people flailing oars tend to rock a boat. There were days when rowers could quit because frustration with the boat, the cossain and myself.
The coxswain is in charge of steering the boat and directing the rowers from carrying the 250-pound racing shells to the dock, through workouts on the water and back again to the boathouse.
He or she is usually a small person and is the only one allowed to speak in the boat, although it doesn't always work that way. Coxswains incur the wrath of the rowers when things go wrong, because they are not as knowledgeable than your close and seldom receive the credit for the difficult job they perform.
And there is pain. Mistakenly, I once thought that if I was in shape, I could row with less pain.
But on full-power workouts, the pain in my legs and arms would often become too much for me.
The worst pain I have ever felt was after a race in Topeka last year. After finishing the race, my right leg cramped. Totally exhausted and unable to free my foot from the shoe in the boat, I watched my leg swell and begin to shake wildly. The rower in front of me turned around and tried free my foot, but I was kicking so badly he couldn't do it. I never want to feel that kind of pain again.
So there is pain and frustration.
That doesn't explain why working out in a dirty warehouse and rowing in weather so cold the sweat on your hair freezes is so rewarding. It's hard to explain.
What makes it all worthwhile is the day when your boat puts together 10 good strokes and the balance is perfect. What makes it worthwhile is crossing the finish line first, clasping hands with the rovers in front of and at the end of the race, with your teammates at that time is something very rare.
But above everything else, there is the knowledge that the hours of work I had put in had finally produced a better person. It was a better person because of it.
David Pressley, member of the KU navy crew, rows to his own beat. Pressley is one of about 170 rowers in Kansas Crew this year.
Meet ends cross country season
United Press International
SAN DIEGO — The Kansas City Chiefs moved a step closer yesterday to their first playoff appearance in 15 games.
See NFL results p. A6
Nick Lowery kicked a 37-yard field goal with seven seconds remaining and gave the Chiefs a 24-23 victory over San Diego. The Chargers faced their eighth straight loss and their first under new head coach Al Saunders.
Quarterback Bill Kenney engineered three scoring drives in the third quarter and enabled the Chiefs to score 17 four-quarter points. The Chiefs improved their first quarter pass and passmission of second place in the AFC West behind Denver.
minutes Sunday. Kenny drove the Chiefs from the Kansas City 31 to the San Diego 19 in less than a minute to up the winning score. He completed 6 of 10 passes in the final 3:38.
The Chiefs outscored the Chargers 10-7 in the final two
It was an agonizing first half for the Chiefs. They lost four fumbles and managed just 64 net yards of offense.
On Kansas City's first possession, Kenney lined up on third-and-14 at the Chiefs 20 and let the snap slip through his hands. The ball bounced through the end zone for a safety and San Diego led 2-0.
The Chargers capitalized on another Kansas City error to take a 9-10 lead in the second quarter. Jeff Smith bumed a punt that was recovered by San Diego at the Chiefs' 2-1 victory, then threw a 7-yard 'owchund pass to Wes Chandler.
By BRIAN SNYDER
Sports writer
The Kansas men's and women's cross country teams finished sixth and seventh respectively at the Big Eight Conference cross country championships in Manhattan Saturday.
Cross country
Oklahoma State won the women's division, and Colorado was the best in the men's race.
"It went pretty much to form," Rovelto said yesterday
Although the women's team finished in last place (Oklahoma didn't qualify for the team standings), women's head cross country coach Cliff Rovelo said the race turned out just as he expected. Oklahoma State place
"The conference is tough and competitive."
Rovello said that everyone ran good races but he was disappointed in sophomore Melissa Satterfield's performance. Satterfield, who earlier in the year was one of the team's top runners, has not run up to her potential. Both Satterfield and Rovello agreed that the problem wasn't physical.
"I'm really quite baffled." Rovelto said. "Physically, there is no reason for it. She's one of our top runners in workouts."
The team results and point totals for the women were Oklahoma State, 50; Kansas State, 57; Colorado, 64; Nebraska, 90; Iowa State, 102; Missouri, 152; and Kansas, 196.
The team results and point totals for the men were:
Colorado, 37; Nebraska, 64; Iowa State, 68; Oklahoma
State, 89; Kansas State, 136; Kansas, 138; Missouri, 195;
and Oklahoma, 211.
J