For 33 years, the Ohio State University club crew has relied on a short but serviceable stretch of the Olentangy River to get OSU students out on the water and into the sport of rowing. Unfortunately, since the late 1990s, when the EPA and local environmentalists began looking at removing the Fifth Avenue dam and returning this same stretch of the Olentangy to its more natural state, the OSU club crew has been rowing on water that lives on borrowed time.
That time is now running out: the City of Columbus has been holding hearings about removing the dam since 2007, but it now looks likely that enough funding will be secured to complete the project by this coming fall. Without the dam, "it is a near certainty that it will be unrowable," according to the OSU club's head coach, Tom Madden. The Olentangy, while barely 1200 meters long and a single lane wide, has given the club athletes a convenient and inexpensive place to do much of their training, and Madden is not sure what the club will do without it.
To make matters worse, the OSU crew—a co-ed team that works to field both men's and women's boats at the Dad-Vail and ACRA regattas—has found its search for a new home stymied by a near perfect storm of conflicting good intentions in Columbus. Rowing has grown exponentially in the years since the OSU club brought the sport to Columbus in 1978: area high schools, the Greater Columbus Rowing Association and the University's 16 year old varsity women's team all compete for space on the city's waterways. The City of Columbus, in turn, uses a complicated formula to balances use of the waterways by rowers, kayakers, wakeboarders, fisherman, and other powerboaters.
That formula effectively closes the OSU club out of the most popular rowing area, the Griggs Reservoir, which is also the next nearest body of water to campus. The club rowers also find themselves pitted against the environmentalists and others who wish to see a more natural river instead of the dammed stretch originally constructed to serve a University power plant. Lastly, the growth of rowing has seen money pour into projects like the new Ohio State varsity boathouse and partnerships develop between the Griggs-based programs and the city, but the club has not been substantively involved in these arrangements to date and now finds itself bereft as the dam project finally moves forward.
For three years, only a lack of funding has kept the dam in place, and the club in operation. Now that hurdle seems to have been cleared: with funding restored, the city plans to remove the dam later this year, leaving the club rowers scrambling to find a new home. The Griggs Reservoir, the five mile stretch of the Scioto River just ten minutes from campus, is not even an option: the club has been told by the City of Columbus that the reservoir is near full capacity for rowers and boaters already.
"Being kept off Griggs has been explained to us as a numbers issue," says Madden, noting that the City will not permit any more rowing teams of any type to move in and has limited further growth of powerboating as well. These restrictions also make it difficult for any existing school or program with access to the Griggs to offer any assistance to the club team.
The club has dealt with this restriction in the past by travelling further from campus, driving 35 minutes to the O'Shaughnessy Reservoir for longer rows that the truncated Olentangy cannot accommodate. Theclub is not affected by the city's boating limits at the site, but the commute "definitely takes a toll on the rowers," says Madden, who notes that this hardship has really only been mitigated by the close proximity of the Olentangy for short rows and novice training. Madden worries that relocating all club rowing to a more distant site could wreak havoc on the club's novice program and membership in general: "If we were to lose the Olentangy, then we'd almost be forced to bring our novices [35 minutes away every day] in the fall and you can imagine what that would do to retention."
The Olentangy, for all its limitations, allows the club's men and women to have "an address on campus to call home" explains Madden, adding that it also provides a place "we can point to for high school kids who have experience." The on-campus location is, he added, as much an "identity issue" for the club as a functional one, but it does allow the very functional use of the university's Drake Performance and Events Center for shell storage and land training. Without rowable water in the adjacent Olentangy, Madden worries that the club's long-standing arrangement for training space on-campus may also be at risk, forcing rowers to commute not just for water practices, but to find indoor training options as well.
As noted above, a number of good things are happening for rowing in Columbus, from the growth of the sport at all levels, to the involvement of the city in safety and stewardship, and even the generosity of donors new to rowing. Ironically, these good things and good intentions have, largely, passed by the group that brought rowing to Columbus in the first place and produced Ohio State rowing's favorite son: Bryan Volpenhein, three-time Olympian, 2004 gold medallist, and proud alumnus of the OSU club program.
As a staunch supporter of the club team, Volpenhein has followed this story closely and finds it difficult to watch the club struggling even as the women and the University celebrate a new facility for the sport, when, he says, the club men and women "were left out of any discussion of using it." In fact, perhaps the only connection between the club team and the new boathouse is that a donor named one of the boat bays for Volpenhein. It is a nice honor but, given the current situation, Volpenhein felt that putting his name on the new facility "was a little inappropriate because, if I was rowing on the men's team now, I would not be allowed to row out of that boathouse." On the whole, it has left him feeling that "Ohio State had a real opportunity to do something great for rowing in Columbus and they chose to do something average."
While the issues keeping the OSU club off the water at Griggs are complicated and not under the University's control, Volpenhein says that he still feels that "the saddest part" of the situation for him is "how poor the relationship between the two teams is." Even if the city cannot accommodate the club's numbers at Griggs and the boathouse cannot house the club rowers, he still feels that "when you look at other [club] teams like Michigan and Virginia, you see how they have maintained healthy relationships with the women's teams and coaches, and how that has led to success. Both of those programs are consistently better than both OSU programs."
The OSU club rowers do have one other option, according to Madden, one offered by the city of Columbus in its continuing effort to keep the usage of its waterways balanced. Following their discussions about the numbers issue at Griggs, the city has proposed allowing the club to explore rowing on the under-utilized section of the Scioto River in downtown Columbus. With this stretch located just a mile from campus, Madden calls this possibility "a great opportunity," adding that there is even "a bike path that runs through campus and directly to these potential sites." This section of the river is not much longer than the Olentangy and the site still requires work, including a place to store the club's equipment, but the completion of a bridge project and the planned removal of another dam, could eventually create nearly 3000 meters of row-able water.
While the men and women of the OSU club hope for this happy ending, the present leaves them facing the dwindling chances of rowing on the Olentangy while it lasts and the daunting prospect of taking next year's novices on the long trek to the O'Shaughnessy. Sadly, the tide rising for rowing in Columbus has left at least one group un-lifted and a club that has always gotten by with little may soon have a whole lot less water to work with.
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08/27/2011 1:03:49 PM
05/06/2011 1:58:31 PM
05/05/2011 1:33:26 PM
05/05/2011 11:08:44 AM
05/05/2011 11:31:32 AM
05/05/2011 11:39:21 AM
Jon Hackathorn '91 Rower '87 - '91 Coach '91-'96 & '10-????
05/05/2011 10:09:01 AM
Obviously, an issue like this can becaome very heated and the true depth of the situation cannot fully be explained in the article. The Club is not looking to necessarily occupy a space in the new boathouse but rather to make sure all options are looked at and fairly evaluated so the best solution can be found so that the orginization that brought rowing to Ohio State (and supported the then new varsity program in its early years with rowers, boats, oars and storage) has a place to call home as well.
05/05/2011 9:41:55 AM
05/05/2011 9:37:38 AM
Not only is it unsanitary, but this damn makes the Olentangy a death trap for rowing boats during the rainy season. Debree gets lodged in regions around the four different bridges the boats row under. I'm sure if I mentioend the amount of money that is spent fixing all of the borken skegs and other repoairs, no one would advocate the continuation of this dam or anyone rowing on it for that matter.
05/05/2011 8:58:03 AM
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05/05/2011 5:05:35 AM