Hamilton Township is known as the home of quality athletes in soccer, football, baseball, softball and…rowing? Yes, rowing.
Believe it or not, three township residents, who are members of the Mercer Junior Rowing Club, competed in this year’s USRowing Youth National Championships in Rancho Cordova, Cal. on June 13-15.
Sisters Kathryn Miller, a sophomore at Steinert High, and Lauren Miller, a freshman, were both part of the Women’s Youth Lightweight 4 with coxswain that took a gold medal in the Mid-Atlantic Junior Regionals on Mercer Lake in May. Rob Haines, a junior at Hamilton West, is part of the Men’s Youth Lightweight 8 with coxswain, which was also a gold medal-winning boat in the regionals.
For those unfamiliar with rowing, the Millers’ boat contains four rowers, while the coxswain is the quarterback of the boat giving the instructions. Haines’ boat has eight rowers and a coxswain. The races are 2,000 meters long, and all three rowers were thrilled to be first by the end of them at regionals.
“Winning the gold was big for us,” Haines said. “Four of the eight guys in the boat had just raced in the light four, and we didn’t do so well in that, so we got off the water and just realized that we needed to do well. We saw that opportunity at the beginning of our race and took it all the way. And we won by about six seconds, which is a pretty large amount.”
If that’s the case, the girls’ boat won by a very large amount—18 seconds, to be exact.
“We were all really excited,” Kathryn Miller said. “The girls in our boat are very close. We all came up from Novice (another division) together and didn’t know what to expect, but we knew we worked well together.
“Our coach called us a scrappy bunch of girls. We weren’t experienced technique-wise, but we improved as a whole. We all went out and worked hard and it paid off.”
“It was very, very, very exciting,” Lauren added. “I mean, it’s just a great feeling.”
Unlike other youth sports, rowing isn’t one where the participants start in elementary school. Due to the rigorous demands of churning an oar through the water, most youngsters aren’t physically mature enough to handle it until they get into their teens.
Haines and the Millers all played other sports before taking to the water.
“I used to play soccer, and outside of that I liked to work out on my own,” Kathryn said. “My mom found out that some girls from my soccer team quit soccer to row. She found out about a camp in Mercer over the summer.
“I went to the camp and liked it, and last spring I tried the actual sport and fell in love with it. Lauren didn’t go to the camp but I convinced her to come try it out with me.”
Lauren also played soccer and said, “I was kind of hesitant to try rowing, but I was like ‘Let me give it a shot’ and it paid off. It just happened to be a better fit.”
Kathryn felt the same way, as both have given up soccer.
“I’ve been doing soccer for so long, I kind of got tired of it,” she said. “When I tried rowing, it felt like a better fit than I ever really felt in soccer.”
Haines was one of the thousands of township males playing soccer and baseball for 10 years before giving it up to row.
“I started because my mom’s boss did it,” he said. “She said it was fun, so I asked if I could try it, and I’ve loved it ever since.”
And while it may look like fun and easy to a spectator on the banks of the lake, it takes intense discipline and workout sessions to make a successful rower. It combines strength and endurance, which must be mixed with the correct timing with everyone else on the boat.
“My sister and I were big into running, so we were already in decent shape,” Kathryn Miller said. “When we started rowing, we had endurance, but the strength is what we needed to get.
“It was hard at first, but over the winter everybody sees themselves get so much faster because of the indoor training that we do.”
“I was pretty tiny going into it,” Lauren said. “I ran so much, but that didn’t help me at all with the strength. I think I’ve gained about 20 pounds (of muscle) since starting. Kathryn has done the same thing, definitely. She’s put on a lot of muscle.”
Haines noted that if a person is not ready to go all out, they will be in for a rude awakening. But he feels the results are rewarding.
“Preparing yourself for rowing takes a lot more time than many other sports,” he said. “You practice six days a week with rarely any days off, or reasons to cancel practice, and you also have to carry what you do home and do some of your own workouts so you can always compete for top spots.
“When I started, I expected it to be hard. But once your body is used to pushing itself, you learn what the team aspect of it is, and it became much more fun than I thought it would.”
Kathryn Miller said practice sessions run from approximately 3:45 to 6:15 p.m. six days a week, but she and Lauren arrive earlier to do some workouts on the indoor rowing machine.
“You don’t want to lose touch with indoor rowing, that keeps you in great shape,” she said.
As for their spots on the boat, Kathryn is in the bow, meaning she is the first one across the finish line, while Lauren is just in front of her. Haines is in the three seat, and basically the role of all three is to row as hard as they can. But they must do it in sync with the rest of the team.
“Everything needs to be together and also the set of the boat,” Lauren said. “It’s harder to set the boat than you would imagine and be balanced. But it’s gotten much better.”
“I really like the team aspect of rowing,” Haines said. “Playing other sports that I know of didn’t compare to how much I really enjoyed being with my team and how hard you really have to work together to win a race.”
Many of the rowers in the MJRC feel the same way. The cliché “you’re only as strong as your weakest link” truly applies to crew. It is not the most popular sport in Mercer County, but it continues to grow.
“Truthfully, I didn’t even know what rowing was until Kathryn did the camp and I barely knew what it was until after she did the camp,” Lauren said. “Probably a few weeks into our Novice season I truly started to understand what it was.”
Haines is trying to spread the gospel at Hamilton West.
“I try to tell people as much as I can to try and get them interested in the sport, but most people don’t really know what it is,” he said. “When I tell people I row, ninety percent of the time the reaction I get is ‘What’s that?’ Which makes informing them about it even more fun.”
Especially when he can inform them he won a gold medal and competed in nationals. No matter what the sport, everybody loves a winner.
Sisters Kathryn and Lauren Miller (pictured center and right) row during a Mercer Junior Rowing Club practice at Mercer County Park. (Photo by Suzette J. Lucas.),
