Indiana University Athletics
The Journey of Indiana Rowing
5/6/2015 10:25:00 AM | Women's Rowing
The Indiana rowing team is ranked among the best in the country the last two years. That hasn't always been the case.
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - When Indiana women's rowing coach Steve Peterson took the head coaching job in Bloomington in August of 2003, he saw potential.
That's about it.
The Hoosiers didn't have a glamorous program. They weren't keeping up with the top crews in the country. They weren't even always filling out a full team.
But Peterson, a former Olympic rower with Team USA, said he saw the foundation for a top-tier women's rowing program.
IU had the proper equipment. The Hoosiers had a great lake to row on nearby. The athletic department was giving the team its support.
The pieces were all there. They just needed assembling.
"I knew what I was getting into when I started," Peterson said. "It was going to be a hard process. It would take a number of years to grow and get faster. But there was no reason why Indiana couldn't have a strong rowing team."
Twelve years after accepting the coaching job at IU, Peterson sits in his office where he's been preparing for the Big Ten Rowing Championships, which take place May 15-16.
 |  Steve Peterson |
On the wall to his left hangs a 2014 National Coach of the Year certificate. Next to it hangs a National Staff of the Year award, which was won by his entirely new coaching staff.
Those recognitions came after a season that saw IU's First Varsity Eight and First Varsity Four boats finish 10th and ninth in the country, respectively. The Second Varisty Eight also had a strong showing, coming in 14th place.
The framed awards reflect the current state of Indiana rowing.
"Does it surprise me that we could get fast? No," Peterson said. "But on the other hand, the fact that we've finally gotten fast is something I knew we could do."
Peterson was right. Because as it stands right now, his crew could put up a fight against just about anyone else in the country.
The Hoosiers may have snuck up on some crews last year, but they can't anymore. Indiana rowing is among the nation's elite.
And they want a Big Ten and National Championship to prove it.
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The first signs of change came during a Spring Break trip to Oak Ridge, Tenn., last year.
IU was just one of a handful of teams training in the warmer waters. Snow up north had kept the Hoosiers out of the water since the fall. This was their first chance to really see the improvements they had made in the offseason.
"We had been training indoors through the winter, but we didn't really know how fast we would be," senior Meradith Dickensheets said. "We were sort of blindly working and following the coaches. We felt good, but we had no idea how quick we would be."
|  Meradith Dickensheets |
To test just how quick IU was, the Hoosiers organized an unofficial race with Wisconsin and Dartmouth.
The results from those races showed that Indiana was now able to compete with some of the best crews in the country.
IU further verified its new-found speed a few weeks later when the Varsity Eight continued its upward trend at the Clemson Invitational.
The Hoosiers beat the likes of Washington State, Harvard, Syracuse and Wisconsin, among others.
That's when some excitement began to show.
"We were all super excited," Morrison said. "It was sort of hard to believe when you think about where you've come from as a team."
A decade into Peterson's coaching tenure, the Hoosiers were piecing things together.
***
But why?
How did a program turn things around seemingly over an offseason? How did the Hoosiers go from near the bottom of the Big Ten to beating perennial powers like Harvard and Washington State?
"Training," Dickenson said. "That's what did it. We all completely bought into the program. We knew we had to do the work if we wanted to get to where we are."
Senior Karly Kikkert, the Varsity Eight's coxswain, credited the commitment the 2014 graduates showed for changing the team's culture. She said they didn't want to settle for the results they had been getting.
"You have to want it--bottom line," Kikkert said. "You have to really live it and want it."
The change took a few years to develop. The team wasn't going to completely change overnight or just by simply rowing more.
For IU to make progress, the rowers had to buy into the change. They were going to be the ones putting in the work whether it be more mileage in the water or more time spent in the training room.
As teammates, they pushed each other. Each held the others accountable in practice and in races.
Rarely were there days where they weren't pushing each other to their limits.
"We definitely had days where we struggled,'" Dickensheets said. "But you know, we just kept going. We made it through it all."
***
Having the training in place is one thing. Having the athletes to do it is another.
There are 63 rowers listed on IU's official roster. Of those, 36 are on the Varsity team and 27 are on the Novice team which is designed for rowers new to the sport.
In recruiting, Peterson focuses on athletes from Indiana and Illinois - approximately 43 percent of the rosters calls one of those two stats home - while also looking for top recruits from across the country and around the world.
"If I had to label us, well, we're kind of a blue collar crew," Peterson said. "We just work really hard. That's what I look for (in recruits). I want somebody to come in here and work their butt off and not make excuses if they have a bad day or a bad performance."
When he's recruiting, Peterson isn't always just looking at rowers. He wants athletes.
|  Asja Zero |
On one end of the spectrum, there's women like senior Asja Zero who grew up with the sport.
Being an international competitor, she admits she didn't know much about Indiana when she started to get serious about coming to Bloomington. She just wanted a program to compete for.
"It's pretty cool actually because with internationals, you really only see what you see online," Zero said. "They had what I needed so I decided to try it out and I really liked the girls on the team."
On the other end of recruitment are the women without any rowing experience.
Dickensheets, a 2014 Pocock First Team All-American last season, was a basketball player in high school. It took the convincing from a friend for her to try out for the team in the first place. "I knew absolutely nothing about rowing," she said, laughing.
Dickensheets' success story is far from common, but she's exactly the type of athlete Peterson looks for when he's scouting potential novices.
He's watching basketball players, volleyball players and soccer players just looking for someone he thinks would be good in a boat.
At the beginning of the year, he holds an open tryout. A few years ago, if a woman showed up she was on the team.
That has since changed.
The tryout has strength tests like a timed run and work on the rowing machines. The coaches measure height and other physical traits until they cut a group of about 100 women down to 50 or so.
That number shrinks down to 20 or 30 by the end of the season.
"We have to have that large of a group because people quit," Zero said. "It's hard. Not anybody can do it. They can pick it up again and do it recreationally, but they can't all keep up with our training program, which is why we have the best of the best."
At the end of the day, those who leave will leave.
But it's the girls who stay that are shattering program records.
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Nowhere is the program's recently-found success more visible than on the Varsity Eight boat.
In the most-recent national rankings, the boat sits No. 7 in the country, which Kikkert said is a good sign of things to come considering that IU is just now getting a chance to taper.
|  Karly Kikkert |
"We're really lucky that we all click," Kikkert said. "The nine of us, these are my friends. These are my family and some of them are even my roommates. We do everything together."
The seniors on the boat credit that closeness for being a major factor in their success.
Even when they're not in the boat, they're around each other. They'll eat together, go to the movies together or just hang out with each other.
"It can be daunting for someone who needs their time, but you know, you have to want it," Kikkert said.
The group has gotten so close that they are able to work in near-silence during the races.
There are times where Kikkert doesn't even have to say anything for the others to row quicker. They've gotten so used to each other that they can sense when they need to pull harder or pick up someone's slack.
At this point in her career, Morrison said she doesn't even remember most of the racing. She just feels the pain and remembers Kikkert's voice.
"You kind of black out during the race," she said. "You don't remember it. I just really can remember some of Karly's calls."
One of Kikkert's favorite things to do is go up and down the lines of the boat repeating people's names as they row. Nobody needs to respond. They just listen.
"For me at least, it reminds me of who I'm pulling for," Morrison said. "It's not just me, it's the whole team."
|  Alexandra Morrison |
Kikkert recently added another call to her bag. It's only three words, but that's all her rowers need.
"You are stronger."
***
There's no shortcuts in rowing. That's what Peterson loves about the sport.
Building Indiana into the program it is today took time. It took years of struggling to fill rosters and a few too many last-place finishes.
But that was part of the journey. Now one of the best crews in the country, IU is where Peterson thought the team could be.
"The thing I like about our sport is we're responsible for us," Peterson said. "We make ourselves go faster or slower. It's on us. We wanted to get quicker and we did over time."
The current seniors have seen both sides of IU rowing. They've been a part of the struggles and are now the reason behind IU's unprecedented success.
But it still hasn't really hit them, Kikkert said. They're just rowing like they always have been.
But Kikkert said the reality of what her team has been able to do hit home after the Dale England Cup.
Peterson came into the team huddle and thanked the seniors for what they've done for the team. He said he's proud of them and reminded them that they were the ones who helped prompt change.
"It hadn't really dawned on me until that moment," Kikkert said. "I mean, the four years just go by. It feels like I just got into my dorm room. I can't really believe we made the change. I haven't felt like it was us."
Kikkert and her teammates say they can't get too sentimental about what they've done. They say there's still a few races left to be won.
But even so, Peterson said they've already won in a way. They helped redirect the program.
They were the missing pieces in his team.
"It's just really kind of cool to see the rankings go, `Ohio State, California, Brown, Stanford, Washington, Virginia, Indiana, Princeton, Yale, Harvard," Peterson said, pausing. "That's what I really wanted this team to be."
