The Oregon club rowing team took first place in two and medaled in four of its six races at the team’s only home competition of the season at Dexter Lake on Saturday.
Both the women’s junior varsity four and the men’s junior varsity eight entries finished first in their 2,000-meter races with times of 8:49.10 and 7:48.70. The women beat four other teams, including Portland State and Humboldt State, and the men overpowered Portland State for the gold.
The women’s boat lineup was Kendra Nyberg, Nini Valerio, Kati Powell, Jordan Rick, and Kelsey McWilliams as coxswain. The men’s boat lineup was AJ Handly, Rob Hohf, Mike Johnson, Matt Davis, Yaman Tezcan, Richard Hardy, Eugene Kang, Danny Auerbach and Hyojung Na as coxswain.
Saturday’s competition, the 16th annual Covered Bridge Regatta, was hosted by the Oregon Association of Rowing, and featured high school, college and masters teams from across Oregon, Washington and California.
“It’s our home regatta, so it’s huge because we practice on this lake five times a week,” Oregon head coach Carly Schmidt said.
Schmidt said this regatta was also significant because it allowed the team to prove itself against non-club varsity teams from Humboldt State, Lewis & Clark College, Seattle Pacific University and Willamette University.
“We see a lot of these schools again at (Pacific Coast Rowing Championships in May) and gauge where we are against them,” Schmidt said.
Assistant coach Molly Fales agreed.
“It was nice to be able to compete with them because I think everyone would like it if Oregon had a varsity team, and the only way that we can do that is by being competitive,” Fales said.
The team also medaled in the women’s novice eight, which placed second with a time of 7:40.41, ahead of four other boats, and in the men’s novice four, which placed third with a time of 8:22.79, beating the University of Portland.
Christine Gamboa, senior women’s team captain, said this year’s home regatta was at least three times as big as last year’s, which increased the races’ caliber.
Gamboa said the women’s team performed particularly well considering the some of the team members’ inexperience and recently recovered injuries.
“The women specifically had an awesome day on the water,” Gamboa said. “We had three major injuries — two knees and a hip injury — so we’ve been slowly nursing it and bringing it back to a good competitive strength.”
Schmidt said the rowers surpassed her expectations in their teamwork on the water, but that they must work on pulling ahead when they get behind in a race.
AJ Handly, sophomore men’s team captain, said although the team performed well overall, it needed to improve its endurance to remain competitive.
The teams will compete next on April 24 in the Oregon and Washington club team championship at Portland’s Hagg Lake, a regatta that the team won for overall points last year and hopes to repeat this year.
Schmidt said the team’s recent improvement represents a good sign for success later in the season.
“Both of our eights did very well, which was exciting,” Schmidt said. “We think we’ve definitely improved in the last two weeks and that we can improve in the next two weeks when we do our club championship race.”

[email protected]