TEAM SPORTS AT its pinnacle almost always boils down to one thing — harmony.
Whenever a group of athletes can operate on the same page, with little or no communication, it is a thing of beauty.
A perfectly executed halfback sweep, a back door lay-up or a 6-4-3 double play is basically the essence of such an ideal.
For many of us, it’s the reason why we play sports . . . Kobe Bryant being a notable exception.
As I discovered at Lake Crescent on a sun-drenched Tuesday afternoon, it is also essential to rowing.
Between all the repetition and moving parts, there’s one thing that truly makes a two-, four- or eight-person shell (that’s what they call a boat) glide across the water.
That’s each of the rowers catching, driving, releasing and recovering (even more rowing lingo coming at you) in synchronization.
When that happens, and each of the rowers is locked into each other like Star Trek’s Borg, the shell skims the water like a monorail.
And for a few moments, it actually feels as if you’re floating on air.
Lead man
John Halberg got the bug back in college.
Back in the 1950s the University of Washington’s rowing team had a string stretched across the campus quad standing 6-feet high with a sign posted next to it:
“If you have to duck under the string, come out and row.”
Halberg, a tall man at 6-foot-2, ducked under it and joined immediately.
He made the top eight-man boat by spring and was part of the team that placed second at nationals to Cornell.
Later on, after he had a family and moved to the family home on Lake Crescent, Halberg got in his mind the idea of bringing rowing to the Peninsula.
He and his five children, all of whom were multi-sport athletes at Crescent High School, even started up their own club — the Storm King Sculls.
They made up T-shirts and rowed across Lake Crescent during the summers.
Halberg stayed at it in his single scull after his children grew up and moved out of the house.
Whenever he entered a competition, he always listed his club affiliation as Storm King Sculls.
His hands, calloused and worn like that of a farmer, speak to his lover affair with the sport.
It was something he wanted to spread to the rest of the Peninsula.
“It had been in my mind for a long time,” the 72-year-old said of founding a club.
“[After the kids left] I had more time to think about it and do it.”
Lessons on Saturday
It took nearly four years, but that club is about to take off.
The Olympic Peninsula Rowing Association, created by Halberg and several other community members with the help of the Clallam County Family YMCA, is set to hold its first on-water rowing lessons this Saturday in Port Angeles Harbor.
In advance of the lessons, Halberg invited me out to his Lake Crescent home Tuesday to give it a try on his own two-man scull (a shell fitted with oars for both arms).
Years ago I called him and asked if he would let me try out a single scull.
He turned me down at the time, saying he wanted to get the club further along.
“I saved your life,” he said later.
He was right.
Given the balance and experience it takes to stay in the shell — long and thin like a torpedo cut in half — I surely would have flipped.
Make a mistake with one of your oars on a single, and there’s a good chance you’ll end up in the water.
Luckily I had Halberg with me to steady the ship.
Rowing machine
To start things off, he had me try out a Concept2 ergometer (aka rowing machine) he had on his porch.
The Clallam County YMCA purchased 22 such machines in 2007 and toured them throughout schools in Sequim and Port Angeles to spread interest.
In PA, Hamilton Elementary School’s PE teacher, Krista Winn, had her kids compete against others from across the country on Concept2’s Web site, with three teams posting the top times in their age group this year.
Here’s guessing they’d whip my butt, too.
I did, however, get the gist of it before we got in Halberg’s two-man scull.
Most of the power in rowing comes from the legs, with the arms used as a follow through.
The hands, meanwhile, are kept on the same plane with each stroke.
All of this, of course, is easier said than done.
It takes a little bit of time to find the right rhythm.
This is because as soon as you remember to do one motion right, you start forgetting about one of the others.
Indeed, newbies often catch a few “crabs” their first time on the water.
(A crab is a rowing error that throws off the boat’s equilibrium, causing it to break suddenly.)
I caught many a crab on Tuesday, but eventually got the hang of it.
In a trance
One might expect the repetition of rowing to be somewhat stupefying.
Yet that isn’t the case.
Rather, you spend much of the time stuck in a trance, searching for the perfect stroke.
With a partner on hand rowing in unison, it becomes oddly communal.
Since the boat sits so low to the water, it almost feels as if you’re skimming right atop the lake.
Once Halberg joined in with me during our session, the boat started to glide much like that amid the splendor of a sunny day at Crescent.
All the beach bums took notice.
“I think [the club] is going to take off once people see the boats on the water,” Halberg said.
Hard to argue with that.
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Matt Schubert is the outdoors and sports columnist for the Peninsula Daily News. His column appears on Thursdays and Fridays. He can be reached at matt.schubert@peninsuladailynews.com.
