Multiple avenues make rowing one of Chattanooga’s most inclusive sports

On Nov. 5 and 6, more than 10,000 rowers will power through this year’s Head of the Hooch, the Tennessee River’s famed 5k head race. From the edges of the Walnut Street Bridge or the green of Coolidge Park, onlookers will watch the swarm of 2,000-plus boats, but what spectators likely won’t see from those spots is the wide range of demographics participating in the Hooch, one of Chattanooga’s most inclusive sporting events.

The race – the second-largest regatta in the U.S. – includes teams from all over the world, drawing participants ages 15-85 to the Scenic City. Rowers ship in from Canada, Sweden, Germany, Mexico and Australia. Younger rowers are seeking scholarships; older rowers, a low-impact workout.

But all are after the fire of competition and the everlasting blaze of friendship – both of which Chattanooga provides with its many avenues to get in on the race.

The Ol’ College Try: UTC Rowing

While most college rowers ended the spring regatta season wondering how to shave another 10 seconds off their race time, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Rowing President Drew Steadman, 21, opened the summer months asking himself a more profound question:

“What would my life be without rowing?”

Last May, the members of UTC’s rowing team walked into what they thought was a routine meeting and learned that the university was planning to cut the school’s rowing program. Some administrators in Student Development were concerned about the program’s financial future and afraid the team would soon bypass its portion of funds allotted to each club sport. One factor contributing to the budget woes is that rowing is the only sport at UTC that currently has a salaried coach, and the university was no longer interested in paying for the position.

“It really caught us off guard,” Steadman remembers. “There was no warning about it.”

The news came as a particular shock to Steadman, a senior varsity rower who had turned down a full scholarship elsewhere to row under the tutelage of UTC’s Olympic medalist coach, Robert Espeseth.

Since joining the team four years ago, Steadman not only had the unique opportunity to learn from one of the most well-known names in Chattanooga rowing, he had also made some of his best friends through the sweat and tears of competition.

“So seeing it terminated with no hope to start it back up again would be horrible,” Steadman says. “I wouldn’t be able to just stop rowing and move on with my life.”

His rowing mates agreed. Refusing to see their program dissipate without giving it the “ol’ college try,” Steadman and his team contacted the school administrators and let them know how much the program meant to them. But their biggest show of solidarity came from their performance on the water.

“Everyone has to be working together,” Steadman explains. “Everyone has to be moving together.” And throughout this season, everyone was. The oarsmen, united in purpose, seemed to be of one mindset, Steadman says, and that unity propelled them forward each time they hopped in a boat. The rowers have consistently broken their personal records for boat speed week after week. The varsity team has placed in the top three in every regatta it has competed in this fall. Even the novice team has brought home medals after each race.

“The transformation we’ve had from this fall, the level of commitment is great,” Steadman says. “We have every single person not missing practice and giving 100 percent every day.”

After a summer of held breaths and emails and letters from supporters of the club, this September, UTC Chancellor Steven Angle assured the team that the rowing program will continue. Though the university will no longer pay the salary for a rowing coach and the members will soon have to find a new way to help fund the team’s competition costs, for now they have shifted their newfound focus to the Head of the Hooch. With a headrace every weekend leading up to the Hooch giving them the opportunity to further improve their performance, the team will no doubt be a force with which to be reckoned.

Shippin’ ‘Em to School: Chattanooga Junior Rowing

Seventeen-year-old Julia Dunn started rowing three years ago because someone told her she couldn’t.

“[My friend] told me I was too small to do it, so I started just to show her up,” Julia laughs.

But then something happened.

While slicing through the glimmering river with the Chattanooga Junior Rowing Club, Dunn started to realize how beautiful the sport was. Not long after, she noticed her time on the water helped her stay focused and motivated in school. Soon enough, she was on the river five days a week and felt “draggy and down” if she went too long without the workout.

“I really couldn’t stand not being on the water,” Dunn says.

Now, three years after being told she was too small, the home-schooler has discovered the best perk of her new passion: the chance to be awarded thousands of dollars in college scholarship money or even get a full ride to a university with the rowing program of her choice.

Women’s rowing at the colligate level was once little more than an afterthought, but since the implementation of Title IX in 1972, the sport has exploded at universities around the nation. The law, which prohibits gender discrimination at any educational institution receiving federal funding, led many colleges and universities to update their women’s rowing programs to varsity status or create new rowing programs to offset the scholarship dollars they spent on football players.

The change meant hundreds of women had a new way to get scholarship money for college – but the funds aren’t just handed out. Just like football recruits, scholarship recipients have to earn their place, and Dunn has been doing everything in her power to do just that.

From her discussions with various colleges, Dunn has discovered that most schools look for girls with 2k ergometer times that are 7 minutes, 50 seconds, or lower. The lower she can get that number on the ergometer, an indoor rowing exercise machine, the more money she could get. There’s just one problem.

“Breaking the 8-minute barrier is tough,” Dunn says with a laugh. She currently sits right on the 8-minute line. “Many tears. Many failed erg tests. It’s a tough mark to reach. But once you break it, it’s like a wall. You break through and then you can just keep going.”

While the athlete continues to whittle away at her time, she is also looking ahead to this year’s Head of the Hooch more than most. With coaches from many prospective colleges like the University of Tennessee, Clemson University and Georgia Tech coming to Chattanooga, she knows this might be her only chance for a scout to see her row in person. That means three additional workouts per week to accompany her usual five leading up to the race, and perfecting her technique. With hard work and a bit of luck, she’s hoping she and her crew will stand out among the thousands of boats at the regatta.

“Honestly, I would just like to get in the top 10,” Dunn says. “I feel like if I’m in the top 10, then I’m good to go.”

A Stroke of Good Fortune:Adaptive Rowing Program

The first time Teresa North saw her son Gib row, she cried.

“As a mother, I was just sobbing because I thought that was something I would never see,” Teresa says.

When Gib was 6 months old, Teresa and her husband noticed that he wasn’t sitting up. The Norths took their son from doctor to doctor, but even now, 29 years later, Gib’s condition has been given no clear diagnosis. From what doctors have said, Gib could have anything from sensory integration problems, which make it difficult to process information through some of the five senses, to autism spectrum disorder, which impairs the ability to communicate.

Options for Gib to participate in any team sport were limited, but Chattanooga’s adaptive rowing program made it possible for true talent like his to shine.

Teresa discovered the program through the Therapeutic Recreation Department of Chattanooga Parks and Recreation, which provides leisure activities for youth and adults of all abilities. Hosted by the Lookout Rowing Club, the program gives individuals with physical and mental disabilities a chance to row by making adjustments to meet their needs. That could mean anything from altering the length of an oar, to strapping rowers in for stabilization, to providing fixed seats for those unable to use a sliding seat.

Unlike some of the other rowers, Gib’s boat didn’t need any special modifications. He just needed a friend – or at least someone who could adapt to his unique stroking style – and he found the perfect rowing mate in Katie Burell, a rower volunteering for a high school senior project.

Keeping up with Gib meant Katie, now 27, had to row much faster to stay in sync with her speedy companion. Luckily, she was extremely patient, especially when it came to his stroke. Unlike most rowers, Gib doesn’t feather his oars when he lifts them from the water, meaning he doesn’t turn the blades flat so they slice through the air. Instead, he rows on the square, keeping his blades front-facing and powering through the wind resistance.

“It’s a harder row,” Teresa says, still impressed. “It really is.”

Though Katie has continued to feather, she has matched his speed and style and taught the altered stroke to Teresa and her friends, who have all joined the Lookout Rowing Club because of Gib.

“Wears us old women out,” Teresa jokes. “[But] Gib now rows in a double, he can row in a quad, he can row in an eight-“

“Double,” Gib interrupts, shaking his head with a smile.

Teresa laughs. “He likes the double the best. Gib loves his Katie.”

And Katie loves her Gib. The two have now been rowing partners for about 10 years. Though she worked with other adaptive athletes while volunteering for the program, Gib has always kept a special place in Katie’s heart. When she went to Carson-Newman University 130 miles away, she drove back on weekends just to row with him. He was a groomsman in her wedding last New Year’s Eve. They’ve maintained a partnership on the water and on dry land, and together, they have finished first in their class at Head of the Hooch three times.

“I know how he rows, and he’s comfortable with how I row and he knows I’m going to follow him,” Katie says. She turns to him and beams. “He’s just my best friend.”

“Best friends,” Gib affirms with a grin.

Momma, Medic, Master: Lookout Rowing Club

Siobhan Duff is always on the move.

From 7:15 a.m. to 4 p.m., she’s shuffling from patient to patient at Chattanooga Family Practice, handing out the prescriptions and compassion that have made her such a highly recommended physician. From 4 p.m. on, Dr. Duff turns into Momma Duff, cheerfully transporting her 11-year-old daughter and 15-year-old twins to and from various engagements.

But the hours between 5 and 7 a.m. never find her rushing around the office or cooped up in the car. They find her rowing on the black waters of the Tennessee River, while the traffic is low and the sun’s on the rise. And she’s never the only one.

Six days a week, Duff is joined by her crew of equally hardworking women who love to row: a sales representative, an actuary from Unum, a marketing representative from Volkswagen and, every so often, a firefighter at the Chattanooga Fire Department.

Together, the women, all masters-level members of Lookout Rowing Club, a designation given to those 21 and older, push 10 to 15 kilometers each morning – but it isn’t just a leisure ride. Before they return to their regularly scheduled duties, they’re running drills, kicking up their workout intensity, jumping onto dry land for CrossFit training and planning to crush the competition at this year’s Head of the Hooch. Because for these 40-plus-year-olds, rowing isn’t just a hobby or something to take up time while the kids are away.

It’s their passion. Their craving. Their ecstasy.

“You don’t do what we do unless you’re a little loose-set in the screws upstairs or you just love what you do that much. Or both,” Duff laughs.

Her love for the sport has made it worth the hectic schedule and having to balance work and family every day, though, Duff jokes, “I think the majority of people that know me would really question whether, in fact, I am balanced.”

That’s because for Duff, rowing isn’t a separate act; it permeates almost every inch of her personal life. She and her husband met 25 years ago through rowing. Some of her bridesmaids were friends from rowing. Her children have grown up around rowing, and now her twins are gearing up to compete in the Head of the Hooch with the Chattanooga Junior Rowers.

“We are a rowing family,” says Duff, adding sheepishly, “Poor kids, eh? Poor kids. I know. But they seem to like it.”

And with rowing being the age-friendly, orthopedic-friendly sport that it is, neither Duff nor her family have any intention of stopping anytime soon.

“It’s a sport you can take into geriatric life. Truly. We have people rowing in their 70s in our club,” Duff says. “You just have to really want to do it.”