World of rowing discovers Minnesota

Schnobrich comes from one of the smallest schools ever represented by a U.S. Olympic rower: Saint John's. His recruiting process consisted of his resident assistant noticing his height (6-5). Schnobrich stomached the 6 a.m. practices, enamored with the way the steam rose off Lake Sagatan as the sun rose over the treetops.

Men's rowing is not a sanctioned NCAA sport. Schnobrich learned to row without a coach. He and his teammates raised money themselves and drove the boat trailer to meets across the country.

Boyd is an anomaly among his teammates. He actually rowed in high school. Of course, he said, "It's not a very selective team." He and his twin brother, Anders, then rowed at the University of Wisconsin, where the varsity eight finished second at the 2002 Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championships.

Wisconsin is the only competitive Midwestern school in the men's IRA. In 126 championships dating to 1871, Wisconsin won seven. The Ivy League schools have combined to win 66, Cornell having won 36 itself.

Rowing's roots

The first collegiate sporting event was a regatta between Yale and Harvard in 1852. In 1906, Princeton had its own man-made lake--with the land purchased, cleared and dredged courtesy of Andrew Carnegie's wallet.

Minnesota might have 10,000 lakes, but very few are utilized primarily for rowing.

Schnobrich and Boyd were told if they were serious about their sport they would need to move east. So they did, each spending time in Philadelphia with the Penn Athletic Club Rowing Association before moving to Princeton, N.J., where the whole men's eight team resides.

"It's just where the athletes are," Boyd said. "If you're some curler in the middle of the East Coast, you're going to have to go to frigid Minnesota. There's more rowing in terms of clubs, but also in terms of where most elite rowers are."

Imminent change?

Twenty years ago, three rowing clubs were situated in Minnesota: the Minneapolis Rowing Club, Minnesota Boat Club and Duluth Rowing Club. Combined, the clubs boasted 130 members.

Now, those three clubs combine for more than 600 rowers. And, at least five more clubs have sprung up across the state, adding at least 150 more participants.

Helping rowing's cause was the creation of Title IX, legislation preventing exclusion from activities regardless of gender, and the subsequent addition of women's rowing programs across the country.

The Gophers became the last Big Ten school to add a team in 2000. Wendy Davis was hired to coach, following her stints at Yale and Stanford. There are now 86 Division I women's rowing teams across the country.

Davis, however, is not only interested in helping women's rowing flourish. When her team moved into a new boathouse in January 2007, she was insistent the men's club crew join in using the top-notch facilities.

"If there is excellence, people are attracted to that," Davis said. "As the university showed this is the real deal, high schoolers say, 'I want to do that.'"

Then and now

Stowe wrote a book, "All Together: The Formidable Journey to Gold with the 1964 Olympic Crew."

"Right or wrong," Stowe wrote in chapter 17, "rowing has long been considered an elitist activity. It can also be said that the better the academic reputation of the institution, the better its rowing program."

Rowing, however, has become more about the individual than the institution. When Stowe was competing, teams from clubs or universities competed for a chance to row in the Olympics through trials. Now, the coach or selection committee must be impressed by an individual's skill.

"It's a little bit too bad, although the rowing has prospered," Stowe said. "But this young man from Saint John's, he never would have had a chance."

Schnobrich earned his opportunity. He even said trying the sport for the first time at 18 was the reason his career launched. He cross-country skied in high school at St. Thomas Academy, where he discovered, "If it hurts, you have to keep going." He learned the strokes and nautical terminology at Saint John's. He was taught at the Minneapolis Rowing Club that training more than three days a week might be a good idea.

More people are rowing before entering college than ever before. Presidents of several boat clubs in Minnesota indicated the quickest growing demographic to pick up rowing are those at the junior level.

Boyd said the addition of more parents to fund raise and increased awareness of the sport lead him to believe the Midwest could contend with the East's dominance.

"We're a hard stock of Scandinavian people," Boyd said, laughing. "Good breeds."