If you haven’t been to Tampa’s Riverwalk in a while, you should make a night of it. Twenty-five years ago, you never stayed downtown after nightfall. There just wasn’t much to do and a lot of places closed up. Now it is vibrant and fun with lots of great restaurants, a huge outdoor space at Armature Works, and of course miles of beautiful waterfront to walk along. It’s really changed over the years.
The girls’ violin activities mean that Kim is in that area multiple times a week. And so on one of the evenings when the girls had orchestra practice, Kim found a loop that she could jog or walk to enjoy the waterway and pass the time through rehearsal. During those times, she noticed rowing crews going up and down the river. Something about the way the boats glided through the water called to her, and she wondered if there was any way old people like us could do it.
And it turns out there is. The Hillsborough Parks Department operates the Tampa River Center that is just next to Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park. Upstairs is a lovely event space, and below is a boathouse filled with skiffs, launches, skull and sweep boats, and everything else needed to teach and practice rowing.
Lots of schools, including our alma mater Hillsborough High School, practice out of the boathouse, but there is also the Tampa Athletic Club which is a master’s (21 and up) rowing club. Kim signed up for a Learn to Row class, and I’m pretty sure she was hooked before she even got on the water. She’ll admit that it is hard. The movie The Boys in the Boat makes rowing look like magic when you do it right, but getting to that point takes a lot of work. For eight people to row with precision and all together is not as easy as it seems. But she has kept at it. Practicing her form, working on endurance on a machine at home, and driving into Tampa before the sun rises for coached practices.
Kim has been wanting to share her love of rowing with us, and it just so happened that the first Saturday in June is National Learn to Row Day. On that day, the boathouse opens up to anyone to give rowing a try. First, we practiced on rowing machines to get a feel for proper rowing form, and then we got in a boat and headed out into the river to try our hand at rowing. These boats are both big and little at the same time. They are like 60+ feet long, but only a few feet wide and not very tall. It was a trick to step in and balance for sure! We weren’t on the water for too long, but we did get a taste of how difficult the sport is. We all had a great time, but Abby really seemed to take to it. I have a feeling you may see her on the river in the future, the Girl in the Boat; not sure it will be a movie, but you never know.
P.S. My title was taken from last year’s movie The Boys in the Boat. It is a captivating movie (and the 2013 book it is based on is even better) that follows the University of Washington rowing team and their quest for gold at the 1936 Olympics. It not only highlights the feeling rowers get when they meld together as a team but also shows some of the events leading up to the 1936 Olympics in Germany, just before the full outbreak of World War II. There is a great PBS documentary as well called The Boys of ‘36 about the same. Be careful, you might catch rowing fever.
