The Ashland Rowing Club exists to promote community and physical well-being, embracing fun, friendship, and teamwork through recreation and competition.

ARC rows on Emigrant Lake, 5 miles southeast of Ashland on Highway 66.  Emigrant Lake is formed by Emigrant Creek Dam, creating an 806-acre reservoir, which is managed by the U. S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation

Our boat barn is located on the left side of the access road, just before the dam at the crest of the hill.  Parking is limited to the parking lot below the dam, not in the boat barn driveway, and not on the side of the road (where you are likely to get a parking ticket).

If you would like more information, please email us with your questions at info@ashlandrowingclub.org

Ashland Rowing Club is a not-for-profit member run organization with over 100 members of all ages.  We are led by a seven member elected board of directors and various committees.  Dedicated, unpaid, generous individuals from our membership fill all roles.  It is important as members that you know whom these people are, as they will help guide you through a successful rowing season.   

Dear New Rower,

We want to welcome you into the Ashland Rowing Club.  You will find yourself in a community of people dedicated to health, fitness, fun, teamwork, and camaraderie.

Rowing is a demanding exercise, involving all parts of the body.  Most beginning rowers start in the recreational category, rowing for fun and relaxation with a social group of like-minded people.    Being out on the lake in the early morning, with geese tending their young, ducks overhead, fish rising and jumping, your boat gliding through the silky surface of the water, is an aesthetic experience that is quite addicting.

As they become more skilled and stronger, many rowers then move into the competitive category of racers.  With goals of testing one's ability against other teams, they are motivated to stretch their reach and go beyond previous limitations of strength.   Races are sometimes serious, but always satisfying.  Pushing ourselves to our limits brings awareness, completion and often humility.  Few events can match the juicy excitement and high energy of a racing regatta, with hundreds of boats lining the shore, and rowers tingling with common goals and aspirations.  This is a sport you can do for the rest of your life The national and international community of rowers is characterized by generosity and togetherness.  Other clubs and teams are always willing to give assistance, even to their competitors.  Many of our boats and equipment in ARC were practically given to us by other clubs against whom we now race.

 The Ashland Rowing Club is only a few years old, compared to established clubs that have been in existence for a hundred years.  It is a work in progress, and for this reason, YOU personally can have an influence in how the club is run, and where it is going.  This is a volunteer organization, depending on the good will, competence, skills, and generosity of its members.  We not only strive to row in perfect synchrony, but also work together on projects in similar teamwork.

The members of ARC comprise a broad range of professional, academic, trades, and domestic persons.  We are open to applicants from all walks of life, all body types, all ages, genders, and lifestyles.  By and large, it is a group of competent, strong, effective members of the Community who find camaraderie and social networking satisfying and invigorating.

Again, welcome to the Ashland Rowing Community.  
We look forward to working, playing and rowing
with you.  May you find a true rowers' home in
ARC as we have.

Sincerely yours,           
Marty Thommes
ARC President (02-03)

 Some ask us: Why crew?

I think my insight into this has been gleaned mostly by personal experience. Initially, there's the thrill of the lake setting, the feel of a racing shell, the sense of adventure, a new beginning. For masters it's also the taking up of a challenge that says something about ourselves and our vitality.

But, very soon we transition into the process of facing this challenge, learning the feel of the boat, the sense of team, the growing anticipation of one day racing, and the reality of the cold, winter workouts.
It takes a special personality to stay with rowing. It's much more difficult to master than it looks, far more difficult than we expected. But, somewhere within us is an intuitive understanding that this is something that we are personally capable of doing at a very high level, if we care to stand close enough to the flame.

The primary skills required of us are different than most other sports. Ours lay in the ability to mold ourselves together with purpose and direction, in the ability to maintain the personal discipline necessary to advance progressively and determinably forward, and the ability to understand intuitively how to organize our lives so that we continue and advance our personal and group momentum. In our world the attributes of fleetness of foot, quickness of hand, and powerful strength pale by comparison to the relentless drive of individual and group momentum expressed in each successive moment.

Because crew appeals to individuals who respect and expect such abilities, we build it all around us. We may try to do the same in other areas of our lives but, because we on the crew share these values in common, it's one place where we really can satisfy our need to make them manifest. When we enter our private little world we call practice/race day, we have behind us knowledge of the consistency we have individually, and as a team, pursued each moment up to that time. We share the reassurance of knowing the quality of the common effort, focus and concentration we create together. Ours is a world where things really can work the way they are supposed to – even with the frustrations we endure in making it so. It's very rare and special to be involved with people who have such expectations of continuous improvement and who share in the assurance that this creates. When you go to the line on race day, it makes all the difference when you know you and all your mates deserve to be there under your club's colors.

There are those who live for the moment. There are those who live in the moment. Both may love to win. Both may race as hard as they are able on race day. Sometimes those who live for the moment win, but more often those who live in the moment win. Living in the moment means every day counts like race day, Each piece on the water has meaning. Every person on the team adds to the forward momentum we are creating as we go. The momentum of this forward motion I call "success." In my experience in rowing, what I care to remember is the quality of the shared experience, in the quality of the moments, experienced in the moment.

You've heard the expression: "rising to the occasion." But, I ask: to what occasion should we "rise"? Isn't the entire process, the occasion? Isn't it in the doing of it, in all the preparatory and participatory particulars, the occasion of the quality to which we aspire? When asked "why crew," I think that the answer lies in the quality of the time we create practicing and racing as one continuously evolving moment, awake, aware, and alive – in the moment.

It's a place we regularly go to make something as it should be. And, when medals follow, it is all the sweeter.

Jim Sims
Ashland Rowing Club

 

The Ashland Rowing Club has created three awards that honor the vision and outstanding contributions of our first head coach Jim Sims, our first club president, Marty Thommes, and club founder Steve Kiesling. Each award is presented annually to the club member who best reflects its special attributes. Jim Sims

Marty & the Tao of Thommes Award   Steve Kiesling

                                                                                     

	The 2005 Jim Sims Award recipient was Jennifer Stoke, who joined Diane Green, Lesley Klecan & Dan Hirsch in being honored for her leadership in setting the standard for rowers to be all they can be and for exhibiting the joy of competition.
The Kiesling Cup was passed  to Corinne Lombardi this year.  She joins previous recipients Toni Knox, Carl Prufer & Patti Ruiz.  This award celebrates her vision and initiative, her tireless giving to the club, and her example of the pure joy of rowing.
	Renee Riley-Adams joined previous Tao of Thommes Award recipients Cathy Tronquet, Joe Lusa and Don Dammann this year.  This award honors the member who personifies the special qualities of a 'seeker of harmony' and 'a promoter of team spirit and unity'.

And new for the 2005 season: The Novice of the Year Award was awarded to the "rower OR novice group that has been an inspiration in either group motivation and/or personal skill acquisition during their first two years of rowing." This award was given to both  the 2005 WRT Novice 8 (Peg Paver, Deborah Gordon, Leah Wingfield, Barb Tennant, Rosie Hart, Tammi Achurra, Becky West,Jacque Notrica, Dana,DuVivier, Beth Hoffmann - Cox) and Torsten Heycke