 |
Tigers baseball team hits its stride
Tigers rack up two wins before Pac-9
play ensues
NHS boys triumph; girls fall despite
national mark
| One
of the crew |
St. Paul's Lauren Wylie has become an up and
coming star on the collegiate rowing circuit |
By B. Scott Anderson, Newberg
Graphic sports editor
E-mail Scott at banderson@eaglenewspapers.com
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ST. PAUL — It happens all the time, all over the country.
A person from a small, remote community makes the big-time. However, it
doesn’t often happen in your backyard.
That’s exactly what happened to former St. Paul athlete Lauren Wylie,
who went from being an unknown University of Oregon student to earning a full-ride
scholarship to the largest public university in the country — the University of Texas
in Austin — on a rowing scholarship of all things.
Wylie was a volleyball, basketball and track star at St. Paul. Crew had never
even entered her mind.
“I went to Oregon to go into the architecture program and they told me
if you wanted to do a sport, then you can’t be in this program,” she said.
“I was going to walk on in basketball or track, but after I was told that, I
didn’t do anything my freshman year.”
But a fellow classmate was participating in crew, a club not a varsity sport,
so Wylie thought she’d give it a try.
“I liked the idea of it, so I tried it,” she said. “I just got
hooked. I was pretty good at it, so I kept at it.”
Oregon’s team had two boats — a novice and a varsity squad —
and they raced against colleges from all over the country, including two of the best
programs in the country: the University of California - Berkeley and the University of
Washington.
“We went to regattas up and down the West Coast — went to Seattle,
San Diego, Northern California, the Pac-10’s and Pacific Coast Championships in
Sacramento. Some of the best teams in the country were there,” Wylie said. “Then
in May we were basically done. It was a lot of fun.”
But there’s more to the story.
Wylie had an unusual connection. Her coach at Oregon, Chris Peters, trailered
boats across the country for Texas a few years earlier and Wylie said he started testing
her.
“We had winter training and when we saw the results of that training, we
both realized I could go somewhere else,” she said.
The testing is done on a rowing machine and you race against the machine.
“You plug in the distance and it times how fast you went (two kilometers
for spring races, six for fall races) over that distance,” Wylie said. “From
those times, I compared with what schools are looking for when recruiting.”
The road to Texas wasn’t paved just yet. Wylie went through a recruiting
process, which led her to Austin and Berkeley.
“At first, I didn’t want to go to Texas because I had no reason to
be there, but (Peters) called the coaches at Texas to get some advice,” Wylie said.
“I took two recruiting trips (Texas and Cal). Going to Texas, it was so big and,
being from St. Paul, I didn’t know if that’s where I wanted to be. But they had
a scholarship offer, a full-ride, which was better than what Cal could offer me. It was
either Texas or not go anywhere, so pretty much it was a no-brainer, but it was still
hard. I’m not in an architecture program right now, so basically I’m a freshman
all over again.”
Wylie moved to Austin last August and has adjusted to the big-city lifestyle.
“It’s completely different than any other place I’ve
been,” she said. “It’s hot all the time and the school is so big — the
biggest in the country. I didn’t think I’d be able to stand living there because
it’s not green and people don’t take care of it down there. West Texas is just
flat and dry and brown — I thought there was no way I could live there. We’re in
the hill country, and by hills it’s minor bumps. But now I love it.”
The city of Austin wasn’t the only thing making an impression this past
fall. Wylie made an impact her first year at Texas on the crew squad.
Fall racing is finished, and she says it went well.
“I got to go to Boston, the biggest regatta in the world —
it’s called the Head of the Charles race,” she said. “I was in the first
eight when I went to Boston. We had two boats that went to Boston, one with eight and
another with four. The eight is the top boat. You want your best, strongest people in the
eight. I basically rowed for barely a year and there were people in my boat that have been
racing since they were 14, so it’s pretty nice.”
Texas coach Carie Graves said Wylie is one her best rowers.
“That’s our noncompetitive races, whereas the spring is the
competitive season and Lauren is definitely in the top 10 (rowers) and definitely top
eight in strength,” she said. “She’s done a tremendous job. She’s an
athlete, she’s driven, she’s got heart and a fire in her belly. That’s
something you can’t coach — you’re born with it.”
The coach also said that she has to keep reminding herself that Wylie
hasn’t been rowing very long.
“What I keep forgetting is that she doesn’t have a lot of rowing
experience, which speaks of her talent,” Graves said. “It’s not as unusual
in rowing as in other sports because the recruiting base in this country in rowing is bad,
quite frankly. There’s huge opportunities for women to get full-rides in this country
in this sport. There are probably 180 full rides for rowing in this country and there are
probably 10 that are worthy. Lauren is one of those 10.”
Wylie has always been a hard worker, something she learned back in high
school — both in the classroom and on the field. Graves noticed that.
“I think it might have been a little hard at first, at a university like
this,” she said. “There were expectations and requirements that you don’t
have at a club sport. It was probably an eye-opener for her. But she has a good, strong
work ethic and is a good kid.”
Graves is a pioneer in women’s rowing. She is a three-time Olympian and
rowed the first time in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, where she won a bronze medal.
“That’s the first time that women were ever allowed in the Olympics
in rowing,” she said.
She was also a member of the 1980 team, but the United States boycotted the
games in Moscow. She was on the team again in 1984 when it won the gold medal.
Graves started rowing at the University of Wisconsin as a walk-on and turned
her experience into a college coaching career.
“I was at Northeastern University in Boston for 10 years and did fairly
well (fourth in the nation in 1998),” Graves said. “I got a call to interview
(with Texas) and got the job. They wanted me to start the program.”
Texas has been improving ever since.
“Every year we’ve gotten a little better and last year we went to
the NCAA’s for the first time,” Graves said.
The Longhorns were seeded 13th and placed 12th.
“Cal, Washington, Wisconsin and the Ivy schools are the programs that
have been dominant for about 20 years, and really it was just Washington and Cal,”
Graves said. “Then because of Title IX and gender equities, people started getting
back into it. Before 1995 there were probably as many women’s as men’s, now
there’s probably 83 to 85 women’s and probably 23 men’s.”
Graves’ pedigree is one of the reasons Wylie wanted to go to Texas.
“She’s a pioneer in the sport,” Wylie said. “Who
wouldn’t want to be coached by someone with her experiences?”
Aside from the rowing, Wylie said one of the biggest eye-openers for her was
what the university meant to the people of Austin.
“I think the Texas pride was something I wasn’t used to,” she
said. “You see Oregon and Oregon State colors up in Oregon, but down there everything
is burnt orange — everything. It’s incredible. The size of the athletic
department and the support is unreal. It’s like none other.”
With the spring season upon her, Wylie is looking forward to getting back on
the water.
“It’s been a really good experience. I’m with a great group of
girls and the team is really, really awesome,” she said. “It’s a growing
team, it’s only 5 years old, and knowing the team is going to get better was a big
draw for me. I’m going there to make the team better and hopefully make a
difference.” |
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From April 3,
2004, Newberg Graphic
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