By Blake Hamill '02

Which Colby sport boasts the largest squad on campus? Doubled in size in two years? Has 10 percent of the Class of '05 participating? Rowing, that's who.

Together the Colby men's and women's rowing teams now have 80 members, double the number in 1999. Seventeen first-year rowers arrived with high school experience, ratcheting the team up a notch in both size and caliber.

So why is this sport so contagious at Colby?

Colby rowers train on Messalonskee Stream last fall during one of their most successful seasons.

"It's a slippery slope," said head coach Stewart Stokes. "Once you start the sport it's really hard to stop. It's one of the only sports where you can feel when your teammates are working hard, and feel that you are one small piece of the puzzle, and I think that's what makes the sport so exciting."

Whatever the attraction, the team is one of the most successful on campus. This past fall, the Women's Champ 4 boat finished 15th of 31 at the Head of the Charles regatta in Boston, only a minute behind their big-league competition--US Rowing, Germany and the Danish national team. This finish marked a considerable improvement in the team's standing, and the overall result was best performance in recent history for men's or women's rowing.

Also fueling the team effort is the addition of two new boats to the fleet. In the tradition of naming boats, the two top-of-the-line Millennium sculls have been named for distinguished Colby alumni. The first boat, the "Doris Kearns Goodwin," will be used by the men's team and saw some time on the water prior to its christening this winter. A January Boston dedication has been planned so that the namesake, historian and author Doris Kearns Goodwin '64, can be present.

The second boat, the "Hilary Gehman," was dedicated over alumni weekend (Oct. 27 at the Hume Center) with Gehman '93 on hand. "It was so amazing to hang out with her at the dedication," said women's captain Katie Ward-Waller '02. "She is such a role model in so many ways."

Gehman, a four-year member of the Colby rowing team, competed for the U.S. in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. Currently a member of the U.S. national team, she has been the focus of articles in US Rowing and Esquire.

Behind the excitement generated by new boats and the team's success, the rowers put in a lot of hard work. Crew is a three-season sport with competitive seasons in the spring and fall and the winter season devoted to conditioning. "It's an all-year-long commitment, both psychologically and athletically," Stokes said. "We try to instill in both teams [women's and men's] a concept of leaving the team better than you found it. It's attitude, camaraderie, speed, in every way."

As the women's team looks forward to its spring season, rowers have their sights set on qualifying for the first-ever women's Division III NCAA championships. "It would be so exciting for the whole team, and especially for the seniors," Ward-Waller said. "It would be so great to finish at that level."