Some rowers come to the Masters Regatta as spectators, and then get so swept up in the action they decide they want to compete. Such was the case with Claudia Schneider, a former Olympian who now rows at Lake Natoma in Folsom east of Sacramento, California. I met Schneider when she came in looking for pen and paper at the results center. She scripted out a posting to tack onto the bulletin board that had become an ad hoc message center for athletes looking to be boated. "World class background, want to compete, can sweep and scull in any boat," she wrote.
Schneider started rowing in 1972 while a student at Long Beach State in southern California. She stands a powerful six feet tall. "I was walking through the locker room in the women's gym and one of the other rowers said hey, have you ever thought about rowing. I had no clue of what it was all about. She told me come on out to the boathouse. So I went out at 5:15 in the morning. They put me in an eight that same day and I was so sore I could barely move for three days. But I went back for more."
That fateful walk through the locker room ended up becoming a major turning point in Schneider's life. In her senior year in 1975 she competed in the Collegiate Nationals in Princeton. "That year they decided to have a camp to put together a world class eight," she recalls. "I was invited to attend the camp and row out of the Harvard Boathouse on the Charles. I ended up being chosen as a member of the women's eight at the World Championships in Nottingham, England. We won a silver medal for the U.S. team." Schneider and her teammates were dubbed by the press as "Red Rose Crew" because their coach, Harry Parker had tied red roses to their foot stretchers. "Why, he did that, I don't know, but it was awfully nice," Schneider smiles in recollection. She went back to California and trained with the Long Beach Rowing Association in hopes of making the 1976 Olympic team. And she did, making the quad that went to Montreal. They did not medal, but that almost didn't matter. "It was an incredible honor and overwhelming experience to a young person. I look back and I think, wow. The emotions you feel with that are very difficult to put into words."
Rowing will always be part of who she is. "I like the camaraderie. I love the water, the early morning, the sounds, the rhythm, moving together, working as a unit." As for her competition days, she says "they were the best times I had ever had in my life."
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