Senior Anarosa Garcia drives 45 minutes to her practice every day after school and doesn’t finish until 7:30 p.m. She devotes entire Saturdays to competitions, yet doesn’t participate in any sport offered at AHS. Garcia participates in crew, also known as competitive rowing.
“Every day I drive to D.C. to row at the Anacostia River, and I spend every day except Sunday practicing or competing,” Garcia said. “Basically, I eat, drink and breathe crew.”
Crew either consists of sculling, which entails using two oars, or sweep-oar rowing, which is using one oar. The number of rowers in a boat can range from a single rower to a boat of eight. Boats with four or eight rowers have a coxswain who steers the boat and tells the rowers what to do. Garcia rows in a four-person boat and is the stroke seat, or the first person in the line-up. Her main job is to set the pace and rhythm of the boat.
Garcia started crew her freshman year at Wakefield High School. When she came to AHS and noticed that there was no crew team, she found the Capital Rowing Club website and signed up for the Juniors Division. Garcia has competed with the club for two and a half years now and is the varsity girls captain.
“The hardest part about crew is the erg,” Garcia said. “It’s an indoor rowing machine that is synonymous with ‘the ultimate torture machine.’ During winter conditioning, since the river is frozen all over, we use the ergs to keep in shape, and those things should be piled on top of one another and be burned to ashes. It’s so much different from rowing on the actual water because being in the river is actually fun no matter how much pain you are in. On the ergs, there’s nothing to think about but the pain as you push yourself beyond your limits.”
Although students at AHS may be unfamiliar with the sport, it is not uncommon for Northern Virginia. Schools in the Patriot District that have crew teams include T.C. Williams, W.T. Woodson, Lake Braddock, South County, West Springfield and West Potomac.
“A couple of my friends from J.E.B. Stuart do crew, so I’ve been to a few of their regattas and I’ve really enjoyed them,” junior Corinne Balicki said. “I think it would be really great for AHS to have a crew team because it’s a really unique sport and I think a lot of kids would be interested.”
“I would definitely join crew if they offered it at AHS,” junior Sherief Beshara said. “I think that a lot of students would love it, and it would be different from my usual cross country and track for three seasons.”
The primary reason AHS doesn’t have a crew team is due to costs. Because crew is only considered a club sport, a team would be expected to raise money on its own.
“Besides costs, there are also other things we’d have to figure out, such as where to practice, how to get students to practice, who would coach and we would need to start a Crew Boosters program,” Director of Student Activities Karl Kerns said.
“If we had enough people interested, they’d need to see me and we’d discuss their plans for it,” Kerns said. “After that, we’d speak with Principal Randazzo, see the level of interest and move forward from there.”
