Crew team dips its oars into prestigious Boston regatta
OAKLAND >> Most days the Oakland Athletic Rowing Society, just two years old and made up of teenagers with little experience on the water, can be found sweeping along the Oakland Estuary.
Many are novices, and learning to row with the rhythm of a dance company hurts: blistered palms from handling oars, feet soaked from water splashing into the boat, goosebumps from the wind off San Francisco Bay.
Those hard practices paid off this month for the Oars crew, as the club is known.
The crew is now at the “Head of the Charles” in Massachusetts, the biggest two-day regatta in the world. The annual event attracts 11,000 rowers, who race down the Charles River between Boston and Cambridge as thousands watch and cheer.
“There will be competitors, world champions, Olympic athletes from around the world competing for their spot as a champion,” said James Kwan, the men’s head coach of the Oars.
The crew flew out Wednesday and will return Monday. The club secured a slot in the regatta through a lottery.
The Oars will be competing in women’s-double and eight-man races, Kwan said.
“I’ve only been doing this for three months, and so it’s kind of surreal to me that it’s already happening,” said Keelan Good, 16, of Alameda, as he stood on the dock outside Oakland’s Jack London Aquatic Center on a recent afternoon.
Nearby, Good’s crew mates lowered an eightman
boat into the water. Like most afternoons, they will spend the next few hours pulling along the estuary, the stretch of Oakland’s waterfront along Interstate 880.
The Jack London Aquatic Center is not the usual place where the club practices: It borrowed a trailer there for a few days because it could accommodate a 60foot boat, which the rowers needed to prepare for the Boston trip.
The Oars’ actual boathouse sits a little south of the center at the Livingston Pier near Quinn’s Lighthouse on Oakland’s Embarcadero.
Many of the approximately 50 teens in the club are from Oakland and Alameda.
Their time on the water can include skirting Coast Guard Island, where cutters are anchored between deployments, and gliding under the Park Street Bridge, as well as past the iconic cranes at the Port of Oakland.
They must keep their pace amid kayakers, daytrippers
on sailboats and fishermen in skiffs who occasionally cut across their path.
But the estuary’s tranquility, especially after a long day of classes, makes it worthwhile, said Nicholas Funchess, an Alameda High School student.
“You can be together and keep your mind off stuff,” Funchess said about rowing and its rhythm. “It’s just a lot of fun.”
Other clubs that practice on the estuary include Berkeley High School, the Oakland Strokes, established in 1974, and rowers from the University of California at Berkeley.
Kwan and his friend Karl Simmons, a parent of two rowers, launched the Oars in October 2016 after deciding they wanted a club that might break down rowing’s elitist image and promote diversity, while also underscoring to the teens who take part the values of integrity, determination and hard work.
“We had a vision for the kids,” Simmons said. “But we’re also competitive and we want to be world class.”
Kwan, who works at Google, began rowing as a teenager with the Oakland Strokes in 2004. He later rowed with the lightweight men’s at Princeton University.
“Everything that drives you to become a strong human being you can learn from this sport,” he said.
When the Oars began, the club owned one boat and a few oars. For the first three months, practices were in parks and other places, where the teens exercised on rowing machines.
The first practices on the water were launched from a secluded patch of shoreline behind the Executive Inn & Suites on the Embarcadero. There was no dock.
Word about the club has spread mostly by word-ofmouth, Simmons said, and the growth in membership has brought in cash to purchase equipment and get a boathouse.
Along with Kwan, the club now has three assistant men’s coaches and someone to oversee land training, as well as a program director and a facilities manager.
The club’s season begins in August and starts with four practices a week. Practices increase to six times a week by the time the season ends in May. There are at least six regattas.
“Rowing takes a lot of grit and a lot of resilience,” said Sarah Schwartz, the women’s head coach. “It’s early mornings and late nights training. The trust and genuine vulnerability it takes to be a rower is pretty unique and unparalleled to anything that a lot of people get to experience in their lives.”