Rowing to compete for Kansas Cup

Friday, April 6, 2007

The Kansas rowing team will take on Kansas State in the Kansas Cup Saturday for Senior Day.

The first race begins at 10 a.m. The regatta will take place on the Kansas River near Burcham Park, Second and Indiana streets.

It tends to go back and forth. It’s not like basketball where we beat them for 20 years. It’s always tight.

-Rowing coach Rob Catloth

The Jayhawks won the season-ending Sunflower Showdown 14-11 last fall, but the Wildcats won last year’s Kansas Cup. Kansas will race against K-State three times this spring.

“We want to get ahead and stay ahead,” coach Rob Catloth said.

Catloth said the rowing rivalry didn’t have a dominate team.

“It tends to go back and forth,” he said. “It’s not like basketball where we beat them for 20 years. It’s always tight.”

This weekend’s competition will be the seniors’ last on the Kansas River. Nine of the 10 seniors learned the sport of rowing after arriving on campus.

Catloth estimated the rowing team never had more than eight rowers with pre-college experience out of the 50-plus women in the program.

Senior rower Whitney Fasbender spent her freshman year as a member of the Kansas track and field team before she tried out for the rowing team. Fasbender said the learning curve helped the team avoid negative competition.

“Because we all came in as beginners and learned the sport together, we became friends first and then teammates,” she said.

Fasbender said that senior rower Jelayna Da Silva, who rowed during high school in Canada, helped the new rowers understand the sport and helped them work through learning it.

Junior rower Kara Boston said the experienced rowers reassured the novice rowers and gave helpful hints.

Boston intended to try out for the track team before burning out the summer before her freshman year. She tried out for the rowing team instead.

“Everybody was learning at the same time,” she said. “You could all start out fresh.”

Boston, who also played volleyball, basketball and soccer in high school, said learning to row required her body to adjust to new stresses.

Catloth said rowers used a combination of endurance and strength that required basketball and volleyball players to develop endurance and runners and swimmers to add strength.

“You develop an athlete who has good endurance and good strength,” he said.

Ardis Johnson, a coxswain who finished her eligibility last spring, rowed for three years in high school in Chattanooga, Tenn. She said working with the less-experienced rowers made her a better coxswain as she helped them learn the sport.

Kansas rowers tend to be athletes first and rowers second, Johnson said, and combining that with the “excellent technique” the college rowers learn helps the boats go faster and be more powerful.

Kansan sportswriter Catherine Odson can be contacted at codson@kansan.com.

— Edited by Trevan McGee

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