Some Georgia officials have talked in recent years about taking part of the Tennessee River. As it is, Georgia just gets to borrow it two days out of every year.
The transplanted Head of the Hooch rowing regatta is a very cooperative effort, however. The second largest in the United States, it is still run by the Atlanta Rowing Club but with considerable help from the Lookout Rowing Club and other local entities.
“We do get along well,” LRC president Peter Ewing said Thursday night, “and we put in a huge amount of time, working on it both here and going to meetings down there.”
Doug BeVille locally is the assistant director to the ARC’s Daniel Wolff in overseeing the Head of the Hooch, which moved from the Chattahoochee River to Lake Lanier and then to Chattanooga.
Ewing in his first year as LRC president but has helped with the regatta since its move in 2005, and he rowed in the Hooch at its original Roswell, Ga., location. He noted that his club conducts its own Chattanooga Head Race on the first Saturday of October every year, and the 2010 version was the biggest yet.
“We’re not that large a club, so there is a little bit of a strain in putting this on, but we get great cooperation locally,” Ewing said, mentioning the parents group of the Chattanooga Junior Rowing club that shares the LRC boathouse as well as Outdoor Chattanooga, Friends of the Festival and other resources.
Jack Fish’s CJR program took four first places and two seconds in last week’s Secret City Regatta at Oak Ridge, and the multischool team is looking forward to Saturday’s and Sunday’s races.
“You never now how you’re going to do,” said Fish, who has 48 youth in his program this fall. “There are 1,889 boats in the regatta, and I think we’re going to race in some that have 80 boats. And a lot of them are good.”
The McCallie/GPS combination also had success at Oak Ridge, and Baylor is rowing in the fall for the first time in several years. With those teams and local adult and college rowers, the Chattanooga area should be well represented in the water as well as out of it this weekend.