Nine teammates from the Toledo Metropolitan Rowing Club eased into their first competition of the season yesterday, on the Maumee River.
They casually sized up their competition in a spring kickoff crew scrimmage - it was Notre Dame Academy - and then chatted on the open water with a coach from St. Francis de Sales High School.
"Hey, you have a boy in your boat," that coach, Kate Pollex, 25, yelled to the team members.
"Nobody needs to know that," Perrysburg High School student Matthew Szozda, 16, joked from the stern of his nearly all-female crew.
And then the two teams were off in a quick, 1,500-meter sprint that took crew members underneath the Martin Luther King, Jr. Bridge, past onlookers at International Park, and then toward a cheering crowd gathered on a pier at The Docks.
Team after team, more than 200 high school students spent the morning yesterday racing in the Toledo Rowing Club's event, which matched athletes from more than a dozen area high schools.
The outdoor sport appears graceful to bystanders, with the boats seeming to skim with ease along calm waters. But participants said crew is a physical challenge, one that matches endurance and even some pain with training, skill, and teamwork.
The day began with teams prepping and carrying their own boats overhead to the water, and then huddling and chanting to psych each other up.
"No pain, no gain is really the only thing that counts for this," said Jim Skelding, president of the Toledo Rowing Club.
Most of the athletes have been training for months, long before the river was fit for those early morning practices that began last month.
Workouts started as early as January inside school buildings, including Central Catholic High School where students raced up and down four flights of stairs for 30 minutes straight, four days a week.
One of those Central students, Mary Beth Hoffman, 17, said months of conditioning help for reach that ultimate goal: A team that can work in unison.
"It's not about speed as much. It's about how you click together," she said. "I just love the feeling - the perfect set. When you're on the water, it feels like you're flying."
The love of the sport was enough for Notre Dame student Katelyn Kurt, 16, to scrap all others: She's swum, played soccer, volleyball, and basketball.
"It's a lot of pain and sometimes you feel like you want to quit," she said. "But you feel like you achieve so much - more than winning a gold medal."
For Dylan Cross, 14, a St. John's Jesuit High School freshman, crew is an obvious fit for him - partly because he's 5 feet, 2 inches tall. Crew is a sport for all physiques, but those who are shorter and smaller typically become coxswains, or pilots.
The Szozda youth was one of those leaders, shouting rowing instructions or encouragement to his teammates.
A teammate included his sister, Heather, 18, who said she's always on a crew with her brother but is usually the boat's coxswain.
"I get to kind of boss the guys around every day," she said.
Contact Kim Bates at: kimbates@theblade.com or 419-724-6074.
First Published April 16, 2006, 3:41 p.m.
