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By default, the girls sweep Photo by Jim Craven Liesl Hofer, left, an Ashland High crew team member, leads a ragtag team of novices trying out their rowing skills Saturday at Emigrant Lake. Rowers trying to follow Hofer's lead are Jesse Molloy, Tom Giacomini, Ben Wayne, Paul Billings and Deborah Hofer (Liesl's mom). Ashland football players skip crew race, but it's still a good day for rowing By BILL VARBLE ASHLAND -- The girls huddle around the stiletto of a boat, torn between disappointment and gloating. They came to Emigrant Lake for a rowing race, boys vs. girls, and the boys are no-shows. Gloating triumphs. "The boys wimped out," Audry Copeland says. Copeland, the coxswain of Ashland High School's freshman girls rowing team, is talking about the Ashland football players the girls challenged to a rowing race Saturday. Only a couple of boys show up, and these 60-foot rowing shells take eight rowers. "Chickens," the girls declare. "Wimps!" With the main race off, the gathering turns into a free row day, with sleek shells skimming the lake and people watching from the hillside near the water slide. A sign on an oak tree proclaims: ASHLAND CREW EAT OUR WAKE The breeze still carries a hint of the snow atop the mountains. Turkey vultures soar in a gray sky, and little tree swallows twitter as they hawk for insects over gray water dotted with sun glints. With rowing in its second year as a sport among Ashland girls, supporters have big plans. "The goal is to get the community involved," freshman Nicole Preston says. "We need to raise almost $250,000," freshman Mariah Baker says. That's for a boathouse rowers envision around the bend and down toward the spillway. "It's going to be the best boat house on the whole West Coast," Preston says. A pickup team in an impromptu staging area by the shore finally begins moving out, and it's time for the freshman girls to get their boat wet. At Copeland's command of "Ready, roll!" team members roll the boat, which weighs more than 200 pounds, over their heads and pick their way down the slope to wrestle the chilly water. "We're going in that water in Spandex," Baker says. The girls are using several hand-me-down boats lent and/or donated by Oregon State University and other sources. Rowing includes sculling and sweep events. In sweep events like this, each rower handles one oar (in sculling each rower holds two). The long shell is only about two feet wide, with rowers squeezed into sliding seats that permit maximum leg power. It's a precision sport, with any deviation from perfection reducing speed. The coxswain sits in the stern to steer, keep rhythm and set tactics. Like penguins leaving the land behind them, the freshman girls turn graceful in their medium of choice, gliding out into the lake with four port and four starboard rowers stroking as a unit, Copeland in the stern. Two other shells are coming back down the lake. "Looks like a race," Graham Lewis says over a public address system. It's hard to tell from shore. "Don't know if it's official, but it's two boats going in the same direction." Lewis' daughter, Shannon, is a senior rower. He says that crew, as the name implies, is a team sport above all. "What I like is the closeness among the girls without any one having to stand out," he says. The nearest team Ashland can race is at South Eugene High School, where the girls competed a couple weeks ago. Cheers from the Emigrant Lake crowd go up as the varsity girls team glides in. A minute or two later comes a herky-jerky team of volunteers. Lewis calls it the "good sport boat." Hey, at least they showed up. Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA