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St. Mary's Ellie Pitcher parlays rowing talent into college opportunity St. Mary's Ellie Pitcher rows last Wednesday at Emigrant Lake in Ashland. Her love of the sport has led to a big college opportunity. [DENISE BARATTA/MAIL TRIBUNE] Sunday Apr 23, 2017 at 5:20 PM Apr 23, 2017 at 6:31 PM By Jeffrey Durhamfor the Mail Tribune "Row, row, row your boat Gently down the stream ... " Or another way to put that old English nursery rhyme: "It's really tough and it can be painful. It hurts like crazy." So says Ellie Pitcher, a St. Mary's High School senior, describing the far-from-gentle art of competitive rowing. She should know. She has loved the sport ever since she discovered it as a freshman in an oxbow off a river in central Massachusetts. But there also is a thrilling aspect to her sport. "It is silent and it feels like you're flying," she adds. Pitcher is so talented at rowing that it will help pay her way with a scholarship to Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Straight west of the campus is Marina del Rey, where she will compete collegiately starting this fall. It doesn't hurt that she also carries a 4.1-plus grade-point average as a senior. Rowing is in its first year as a club sport at St. Mary's. Rick Brown, director and coach of Rogue Rowing — the former Ashland Rowing Club — says Pitcher worked extra hard to get to this point. "It was fun to watch Ellie's growth as a rower in the year and a half that she rowed with us," Brown says. "She picked up a tremendous amount of speed in a short time with some dedicated and focused training. “Ellie set a goal of receiving a scholarship and was motivated by the possibility. She put in extra work outside the normal practices to reach this goal." Pitcher is now concentrating on eight-person boats, or shells, but has competed in all variations of the sport. Eight-person crews use one oar per rower on alternating sides of the boat, called sweeping, while competitors on four-person boats handle either one or two oars, both sweeping and sculling. A coxswain handles a pulley-system rudder and helps the boat keep in its lane during a race. The sport demands conditioning. Pitcher and her teammates spend hours working out and practicing at Emigrant Lake. The boathouse there contains exercise equipment, including "ergs," or ergometers, weights and cardio machines. They work on aerobic exercises for long-distance endurance and anaerobics to replenish oxygen during sprinting. She says the lower body — including the quadricep and hamstring leg muscles — get the biggest test in competition. Because she is 5-foot-11, Pitcher says she does have an advantage. Being taller gives her more leverage in rowing and enables her to keep the blade in the water longer per stroke. Rogue Rowing competes all across Western Oregon and Washington. There are 20 to 30 Rogue Valley high school rowers in the club, says Pitcher, and they are eligible to receive varsity letters. Olympic rowing races, or regattas, are 2,000 meters in distance. The team is focusing on that distance this spring. "We are doing more sprints and going all out," Pitcher says. "It takes five to eight minutes to do 2,000 meters. You have to use all of your skills." Pitcher lived in California for three years and enjoys the Southern California beaches and lifestyle. She considered other schools, such as St. Mary's College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University, but decided she would be most at home at Loyola Marymount. She says the program is committed to its rowing program. "They have a new coach from UCLA and they are restructuring and amping up the program," she says. "They have more than 14 new freshman rowers coming in." Marina del Rey is an enclosed marina, protected from the ocean swells just outside. Rowing is not all Pitcher will do in college. She plans to major in both biology and chemistry, go to medical school and then looks forward to becoming a cardiovascular surgeon or neurosurgeon. But rowing has become a way of life for her, too. During her high school freshman year in Massachusetts, she had to choose a required sport for spring. One of the sports was rowing. "There was this thing called rowing," she says. That "thing" grew into something special in her life.