It’s impossible to see the other shore as the four oars catch the water. The full moon shines bright enough to see the oars, shadowlike, moving in unison. The water is black and the trees are only rough outlines. Sarah Billiar’s oar feathers at once with the others, her body aches and her fingers wear open against the wooden grip. Her fingers become numb and red from blood, but still, once the boat is on the water, the four girls have to move the shell together. One person can’t row alone.
At 5 a.m., while the night is still resting over Buffalo, University at Buffalo sophomore Sarah Billiar is already on her way to crew practice. When the first students wake up, Billiar is on the water, rowing.
“All my friends call me crazy,” said Billiar. “Maybe because I only get like three hours of sleep because I’m also an RA, or because I wear spandex to class.” While the practices are early, their intensity is where the true challenge for the crew team lies.
These unforgiving practices have turned the four lightweight rowers into a union. For at least four hours every day, Billiar rows, lifts weights, and runs with her teammates. For others, it is difficult to believe that the 19-year-old, 5’4”, 125-pound Billiar rows. If she didn’t wear her practice clothes or her UB rowing apparel to class, she would have a hard time convincing people that she is a rower.
Crew is a sprint-endurance sport. Rowers must have a certain strength and level of fitness. The races in the spring last up to eight minutes, and thus the girls have to be used to going as fast as they can for about eight minutes. “These girls have to learn to lift weights at 36 reps per minute over eight minutes,” explained UB Women’s Crew Assistant Coach Elizabeth Ostermeier. Although Billiar’s figure is petite, she is strong and has endurance. When she rows, her muscles are visible underneath the tight clothes, and she has learned to use every pound of the body weight.
Out of the 69 girls on the UB Women’s Crew team, only 19 are varsity rowers. The team has 14 freshmen on their roster this year who have already produced many top-three finishes in the shorter fall season. The new depth of the team increases their talent and strength and brings an exciting outlook for this year.
It is 5:30 a.m. The boathouse gleams in the darkness of the early morning hour. Billiar’s eyes are not yet adjusted to the bright light illuminating the hut. It is almost impossible to see what happens inside the boathouse; the light is blinding and forces its way through every slit in the walls. The girls of the crew team, most of them tall and muscular, rush into the light with their hands covering their eyes. Most of them wear spandex, several tight layers of long sleeve shirts, and sneakers. Everybody is dressed in black, blue, and white, the University’s colors.
Crew is the oldest college sport in the U.S., but it has lost popularity since its strong origins. The oldest intercollegiate athletic event was a rowing race between Harvard and Yale at Lake Winnepeaukee on August 3, 1852. Despite crew’s long history, today rowers comprise only 2.2 percent of total college athletes, partly because many schools do not offer the sport. Many colleges have difficulties accessing water and maintaining a rowing team. Hence, rowing started off as an Ivy League sport at the colleges with the financial possibilities to run a rowing program.
In other countries, rowing is highly revered, and rowing teams get a lot of attention. Rowers put a lot of work and dedication into the sport. Nevertheless, lacking a professional rowing league in the U.S., the college rowers are on the water alone.
“It isn’t about the fame or the money. There is no professional rowing,” said Ostermeier. “You do it because you like the challenge and most people are not capable of handling such a challenge. You have to be dedicated, strong-willed, and tough to survive in this sport.”
The University at Buffalo rows boats of eights and fours. The eight fits nine people—eight rowers and one coxswain—and the four consists of four rowers and one coxswain. The eights and fours are sweep-oar boats, where every rower holds one oar with both hands. This year, UB Rowing owns five eights and four fours, as well as one quad and two pairs. The quad and the pairs are sculling boats; they are coxless and each rower has one oar in each hand.
In earlier times, the boats were made out of wood, but to reduce the weight and increase the boat’s strength, modern boats are composed of composite material like carbon-fiber reinforced plastic. Nowadays, an eight only weighs about 200 pounds. The oars are made of synthetic materials, which lower the oar’s weight to about 5.5 pounds.
The rowers themselves are split up in “lightweights” and “heavyweights.” Out of the 69 girls on the team, 23 are lightweight. Lightweights must weigh in at 130 pounds or less for their races, but heavyweights have no weight restriction.
Billiar, a lightweight, doesn’t have any problems maintaining her weight, but healthy eating habits are still required. When the team is on the road, the heavyweights can go out for dinner but the lightweights have to stick to their diets.
“Lightweight rowers normally bring their own food because of special diet needs to maintain weight,” said Billiar.
As the team arrives, it is easy to pick out the novices. The freshmen are awake and nervous, frantically trying to find something to do. The veterans, on the other hand, walk with certainty to their boats. Sarah disappears between the much taller and stronger girls.
Outside in the dark, the noises fade away and the world seems peaceful and calm, but inside the boathouse, it’s hectic. A girl’s voice interrupts the sleepy atmosphere: “Ready, head up, split, shoulders, and go!” The coxswain gives the order from outside the hut. The four rowers move to carry the $15,000 boat in harmony. They have to work synchronized on and off the water. The boat appears mighty as it comes into view. It is narrow (one seat barely fits into it), but although the shell is thin and petite, it is powerful. The boat gleams into the darkness, majestic, sitting on the rowers’ shoulders.
The team is now already far into their fall season, and they are rowing at high speed. They kicked off the season with three first places finishes, one second, and one third place at the Head of Ohio meet in Pittsburgh, PA. UB beat such schools as Cornell, Syracuse, and Harvard when they secured victory at the Head of the Genessee meet in Rochester, NY. The team will continue the season at Saratoga Springs, NY, and will round up their fall season on November 4 at Syracuse, again battling against the Orange ‘Cuse and for UB pride. Their victories are the rare rewards for their hard work.
“When you get up at 4:30 every day, you do get used to it,” explained Billiar. “I was not bothered by it too much because in high school, my parents made me wake up with them at 5 a.m. to go running before school.”
Six out of seven days a week, at 5:30 a.m. sharp, the boats are on the water. “My parents aren’t here anymore to make me wake up, but I continue to wake up so early in the morning and work hard because it keeps me on track,” said Billiar. “I have more time during the day, and after a good workout, I feel better and ready for my day.”
The rowers can smell the water all the way into the boathouse. The morning air is cold and fresh as it rushes into Billiar’s nose; she can feel the sharpness of the cold, like a knife cutting her skin. The air continues its way down to the lungs, where the chill fires like shockwaves through her body. It’s not a bad morning; the thermometer reads 53 degrees.
The rowers practice on the water until Thanksgiving break or until the Tonawanda Creek freezes. It is a warm day for the rowers, who are used to temperatures around 30 degrees. “We’re not allowed to wear gloves because it is easier to lose control over the oar with gloves, so we use Pogies,” said Billiar. In the winter, gloves minimize the feeling for the oars. Pogies are made of fleece and connect the rower’s hands to the oar by a slot in the Pogie. The hand is attached to the oar, and if the rower wants to let loose to the oar, she has to pull her hand out of the Pogie.
While the Pogies help, they don’t save the rowers from pain and discomfort. “They don’t conserve much heat, but they do help with wind chill,” explained Billiar. “It’s not too bad really because once your hands get cold enough, they just go numb anyway and you can’t really feel anything anymore.” When Buffalo is at its finest and it snows and the winter wind blows, the UB rowers practice.
As long as the ice is thin and only at the shores of the creek, the team is on the water. The oars break the ice and the boat is free to move. The team rows all year long. As soon as the water is frozen, they practice inside on special rowing ergometers. This is vital for preparing the UB team for the heavy-loaded spring schedule, which is the main season for rowers. The entire team must be in top shape.
The girls are setting up for a “sprint practice,” which means short distances but high intensity. These days are tough. It is still early in the season; therefore, the practices ask the rowers to pull out their last energy reserves. This is the time to build up the level of conditioning the girls need to last for an entire year.
Since joining the team a year ago, Billiar got used to everything but having her palms bleed. “Snow is okay because we just brush it off, but ice can be a bit of a pain because it makes our dock slippery and freezes onto our boat,” she explained. “Now the rain, although tolerable, is the real pain because it fills the boat with water, making it heavy, and it soaks through most of our layers.”
She constantly has blisters on her palms and they cut open while rowing. The grip of the oar is wooden, only rough palms can deal with them. There is nothing she can do; she has to row this morning.
“It can get pretty frustrating because you are working as hard as you can while you are cold and drenched,” Billiar said. “It also makes the oar handles wet which then causes us to get huge blisters and calluses on our hands.” The girls don’t complain about the weather or the pain. Once practice starts and the boat is on the water, there is no way back.
At 5:50 a.m. the girls push their boat away from the shore. A dog barks and the ducks leave waves on the water as the boat approaches and scares them away. The boat moves with every little wave and the rowers move with the boat. The coxswain’s voice thorough the megaphone sounds out of place, interrupting the sounds of nature.
Coxswains are the captains of the boat. They turn the boat, they motivate the rowers, they instruct, and they correct. A good coxswain is worth every pound of his or her weight. “Rowers do whatever the coxswains say,” said Billiar. “We are the workers and they are the thinkers.”
The megaphone changes the coxswain’s normally soft voice; it sounds foreign as it echoes into the calm morning. The water splashes as the rowers let the end of the oars dive into the water. The team is falling into stride.
“When it is dark and the only light comes from the moon, I easily get lost in the steady rhythm of the oar locks beating like drums,” said Billiar.
The girls are silent as they row. The only sound comes from the disturbed water, awoken by the oars. Soon after pushing away from the shore, the five girls on the boat disappear into the morning fog. “We are not allowed to talk in our boat, so it is always quiet,” Billiar said, “and even though I am exhausted, I am so relaxed because I never think about life at practice because of that feeling that I am away from the rest of the world.” For a long time the water carries the sounds of the four oars back to the shore. Though it is shrouded in fog, the coach knows the boat is moving.
It is after the first hour that Billiar’s palms start bleeding. She’s unlucky because her blister opened up. That’s no excuse to take it easy, however. “I am afraid of not giving it all I have,” she said, “because I am in the boat with seven other rowers and if I do not push to the max, then I am burdening them with pulling my weight.”
At about 5:58 a.m. the morning red is visible between the trees and the sun is rising. “The peace I feel inside when the sun is just starting to rise and the water’s glistening copper and the birds are just starting to awaken is one of the main reasons I have fallen in love with crew,” explained Billiar. “Just this morning, when our coxswain told us ‘let it run,’ I looked up to a pink and purple streaked sky.”
Half an hour later it is light, but the girls have already been on the water for about 50 minutes. It’s still cloudy and foggy, and the rowers can feel the coldness and humidity rising up from the water and crawling underneath their clothes. Billiar has already stopped thinking, and the oar’s grip is still pressing into her open blisters. She grunts in pain every time she pulls.
It is then that Billiar forgets everything around her. She can’t let loose—rowers rely on each other. The coach yells from a distance, “One more minute!” She grits her teeth, focused on the sound the boat makes. She gets slower and right away the coxswain pushes her. She is not allowed to slacken. The consequence for slowing the boat down is starting the sprint over. She has to stay with the rhythm. It is a team effort.
When she falls back into synch, Billiar’s eyes light up as she feels the energy flowing through her muscles again. The four oars sound like a drum; she can hear the rhythm.
At 8:30 a.m. she steps out of the boat. The team has to carry it back to the boathouse and put it away. By this time it’s light, and the boat hut no longer resembles the gleaming structure it is at dawn. It looks old and broken.
After practice, Sarah Billiar takes off to her morning class, disappearing into the crowd of students. Nobody suspects that she has been up since 4:30 in the morning and has already rowed miles and miles.
Her small statute and unassuming behavior mislead many. Her fellow classmates don’t know what she and her teammates faced that morning. The rowers don’t care because it isn’t about the fame or popularity.
“I feel the best kind of practice is the one that makes you feel sore from head to toe,” said Billiar. “After a cold practice, even though I am freezing and wet, I feel tough and proud that I was able to put up with it all. I love telling my friends how in the morning our oars where chopping through ice, because I am like ‘Yeah, our team is tough. And we can handle anything.’”
