UpDate - Vol. 13, No. 12, Page 10
November 18, 1993
Rowing team making its place as a force in the East

     Placing 11th out of 31 varsity teams at Philadelphia's Schuylkill
Regatta Oct. 30, the men's championship eight division of the University's
crew team bested some of the "big name" varsity competitors of the sport,
contributing to the club team's third successful fall season.
     The Delaware club crew team is one of the largest organized athletic
groups on campus.
     Amanda Wemple, a junior interior design major, is president of the
crew club, which includes both men's and women's categories. "It's amazing
how the team has grown from nine members just three years ago," she said.
     At the recent Schuylkill Regatta, the Delaware women's championship
eight category placed 13th out of the 25 teams entered.
     The crew team competes during the fall and spring semesters, but
members participate in a rigorous practice schedule throughout the year.
Both the men's and women's teams wok out six days a week, sometimes
beginning practice as early as 6 a.m.
     According to Greg Logan, a senior environmental science major and vice
president of the crew club, "The motivation for me is the tremendous
satisfaction you get when finishing a race. It makes you feel really good."
     For Wemple, the commitment is important. "You have to want to do it
for yourself," she said. "I'm constantly telling my friends that I can't do
this or that with them, but it totally gets you hooked."
     Each member of the team pays a semester fee of $250, which goes toward
dues to the Wilmington Rowing Club (WRC), located on the banks of the
Christina River. The WRC, not far from Legends Stadium, home of the
Wilmington Blue Rocks baseball team, is where the crew team practices and
launches its boats.
     In addition to the semester fee, members must pay for their own
uniforms and transportation to and from practice. Each member also
contributes to lodging and transportation at competitions away from
Delaware.
     The team relies on private donations and the proceeds from
philanthropic events. Raffles, row-a-thons and T-shirt sales are a few of
the fundraisers the team has held.
     Participants include those with no prior knowledge and others with
some experience.
     One crew member, junior physics major Andrea Stith, was in Washington,
D.C., delivering a scholarly paper on multilayer optics for a National
Science Foundation conference based on the results of her summer job at
Lawrence Livermore National Lab in Livermore, Calif.
     Finished, she traded her business suit for casual attire and hopped a
train for Philadelphia where she competed in an important race as a member
of the University's crew team.
     Stith, who is in the University's Honors Program, leaves for crew
practice at 5:15 a.m. six days a week and returns for practice for an
additional two hours each afternoon.
     The crew team is coached by the former U.S. national oarsman Chuck
Crawford. Prior to coming to Delaware, Crawford coached the 1991 United
States Pan-American Team.
     According to David Black, an associate professor of economics at the
University and faculty adviser to the team, "It was Crawford's hard work
and dedication that brought the crew team to the University of Delaware. He
has been coach since day one, and the team could not exist without him."
     In competition, the women use six boats and the men use four. The
women's team competes with one heavy-weight varsity, one heavy-weight
junior varsity, a light-weight varsity and three novice boats.
     The men have a heavy-weight varsity, a light-weight junior varsity and
two novice boats.
     Despite being a club sport, the Delaware team has fared well against
varsity teams from top-level rowing schools throughout the East Coast,
including such name crews as Temple, Virginia, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Loyola,
George Washington and Georgetown.
     The women's heavy-weight boat experienced a major victory on Oct. 16,
against Temple, at the Navy Day Regatta held in Philadelphia.
     "It's amazing to know that we are competitive against, and can hang
with, a big rowing school like Temple," said Wemple. "Beating Temple at the
Navy Day Regatta has been one of my best experiences on the crew team."
     The team also has compiled several victories and place finishes over
the past three years at intercollegiate regattas. It concluded its fall
1993 season with the Bill Braxton Memorial Regatta Nov. 14 in Philadelphia,
where men's teams won first place in section one and second place in
section four for the freshman novice eight and placed second in the finals
for the lightweight eight. The women's team placed third in the varsity
eight.
     According to the team members, this team has gotten stronger every
year. It started out with nine students with no prior rowing experience.
Today, the team is 110 members strong (50 men, 60 women).
     "More people are getting involved in crew," Logan said. "People are
starting to look at Delaware as a talented rowing school. The more you row,
the better you get, and we are slowly catching up to the elite schools."
                                                  -Matthew Beckman