"Some people are here to compete very seriously, but others are in it for the camaraderie. The spirit of this event largely is about having fun."
It's a tradition at masters rowing events that when the official racing is over, there is still one more race to be run. By FISA tradition this event pits members of the FISA commission against the umpires and the local organizing committee. They've recently expanded the field to include staff and volunteers, so this year's final race consisted of six boats.
If you were a betting person, there was one boat that was the money team. It included a lineup of rowers with a list of medals a mile long that include Olympic gold : Michael Teti, now the U.S. Men's National Team coach; Kay Worthington, Executive Director of the Princeton National Rowing Association; Sean McCourt, Head Coach, Mercer Junior Rowing Club; Pete Szymanski, Mercer Masters Head Coach; 1988 Olympic Silver medal coxswain Seth Bauer; Tim Hosea, a local orthopedic surgeon who rowed at Harvard; Chris Mesigian, a rower from Philadelphia; Tim Royalty, course construction specialist owner of Precision Racing, based in Cincinnati; and Marty Crotty, freshman heavyweight head coach at Princeton University.
It was a heavyweight team all right, and the outcome was never in doubt, even though the dream team did jump the start. "But we never had a doubt we would win," laughs Barbara Grudt. Grudt and Mercer Lake are like old friends, weaving in and out of each other's lives from time to time, making new memories and reliving the old ones with nostalgia. This time she came back as a volunteer working out of the marina building doing data entry, critical information behind-the-scenes for the competition—things like line-ups and race results. This is stuff that might intimidate the lay volunteer about making a mistake, or not knowing exactly what to do.
Grudt knew exactly what to do because as were so many of the volunteers who pitched in over the four days of racing and the myriad chores before and after, Grudt is a rower. And not just any rower:Barbara Grudt is a World Class rower, an Olympian.
Back in 1988 they had the Olympic trials here at Mercer Lake, one of the very first races on this course. Grudt and her partner Maura Keggi rowed in the women's pair and they went to the Seoul Olympics in 1988. They made the finals, an amazing feat, considering that they had only rowed together for three weeks before the qualifying race.
Grudt had not set out in life to be a rower. In fact, as an undergraduate at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, she threw discus and played volleyball. But she wanted to be an athlete, one who worked hard and competed tough, and so she looked for a new sport with fresh challenge and good coaching. It didn't hurt that she was six-feet-tall.
So she did a tryout at the Vesper Boat Club in Philadelphia located at 10 Boathouse Row. It's part of that famous line-up of boathouses that's used in postcards and holiday cards, almost as famous as San Francisco's "painted ladies" Victorian row homes in Alamo Square. The Vesper Boat Club took her and she transferred to the University of Pennsylvania as a junior. But even before she got there, she took a year off from school and went to Germany. This would turn out to be a critically important move for her rowing career because in Germany, she trained with the women from the West German Olympic team whom she had met at the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta.
Back at Penn, she made the varsity eight in her junior year. She made the U.S. National Team in the coxed four the summer of 1982 and won a silver medal at the Worlds that year in Lucerne. From 1980 to 1988 she rowed in international competitions, including the Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984. In 1987 she won a bronze medal in the women's double at the World Championships in Copenhagen.
After the Seoul Olympics, she started coaching, spending nine years at Dartmouth and nine years at Penn. This summer, she just finished up a masters degree in higher education administration at Penn. At this point in her storied rowing career, she would like to focus on helping rowers at the junior level for the U.S. National Team (18 and under) with sculling development.
She is thrilled to have been part of the 2006 FISA World Rowing Masters Regatta. "It's an international competition stretching back years and years and across many miles," she observes. "There were so many reunions of rowers and friends who come here to compete, but also to catch up and stay in touch. That's another reason why crew is such a great lifetime sport. It's hard work and literally lots of sweat. Some people are here to compete very seriously, but others are in it for the camaraderie. The spirit of this event largely is about having fun." When you put it that way, it's fair to say that everybody went home from Mercer Lake with gold.
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