Submitted photos – Nine HBRA rowers recently made the trip to Foster City in the Bay Area to compete in the Head of the Lagoon Regatta.

By Ray Hamill — The Humboldt Bay Rowing Association Junior Team recently made the trip to compete at the Head of the Lagoon Regatta in the Bay Area, as the local club begins to find its feet again.

The Eureka-based team traveled with nine rowers for the event and has seen its numbers rise to 14 this year, the highest number since pre-COVID.

And, according to head coach Chris Dadd, it was a good showing by the young rowers.

“Most of the kids we went down with raced a couple of times each,” Dadd said. “For the most part they’re new at rowing and they did pretty well.

“It was a great experience for them.”

The rowers who made the trip include Jared Pereira, Anya Seiler, Dalia Kalson, Kai Turpin, Dylan Scofield, Tosh Young, Jubilee Kraft, Leti Benitez and Aizlin Bluntzer.

The HBRA rowers range in age from 12 to 17 and come from a variety of local schools, including Arcata High, Eureka High, Fortuna High, Alder Grove and Winship. 

Roughly half the team just started rowing this year, but most of them appear to be taking to the new sport.

“It’s a big commitment,” said Dadd, whose team practices four times a week after school. “It’s one of those things that kind of either really grabs you or it doesn’t.”

The coach believes there are multiple benefits to competing in the sport, including the satisfaction of achieving success with your teammates.

It’s something he has often seen in his many years coaching the sport.

“They realize they’re capable of more than they thought,” he said. “It’s a lot like working on a play in football. When it goes right it feels good. It’s a personal challenge and that’s rewarding to put yourself out there.”

The junior team is one of two Humboldt Bay Rowing Association teams, along with the Masters team, and both compete regularly at regattas up and down the West Coast, where the sport of rowing has a long and storied tradition.

Including here on the North Coast, where the Cal Poly Humboldt men’s and women’s teams host an annual regatta on the Humboldt Bay every spring.

The Lumberjacks women’s team has enjoyed substantial success on the water, including winning a pair of NCAA national championships in the past decade.

The recent pandemic put a dent in that local success at the youth level, but the young HBRA rowers are beginning to come out again, something the coach has seen first-hand this year.

“We’re really rebuilding right now after COVID, because numbers were down for obvious reasons,” Dadd said. “People who row are not afraid of hard work. There’s a certain toughness about rowers because of the nature of where you’re at and what you’re doing.”

And the junior team is always on the lookout for more young rowers.

“We keep adding kids that are enthusiastic and follow instructions well and see the positive outcome of doing that work,” Dadd said. “And we have some young kids too.

“If they decide they like it and also can work hard, some of those kids are going to be really good, and by the time they get to high school they’re going to be very skilled.”

And for young rowers not afraid of that hard work, what’s not to like about the sport?

Dadd describes West Coast rowing as very competitive, and the Humboldt Bay as a “beautiful place to row.”

“We have a fairly good tradition of both adult and junior rowing on the bay,” said Dadd, who coached the sport at Berkeley High School for 20 years before moving to Humboldt County.

Dadd also helps coach the Cal Poly Humboldt men’s team.

The HBRA rowers competed in several different events at the Head of the Lagoon Regatta, and two of the local rowers who made the trip also competed with rowers from Oregon.

And Dadd has seen a lot of improvement from his young team.

“They’re a really good group of kids and they’ve grown a huge amount in terms of their conditioning and knowledge (of the sport),” the coach said.

He also praised the impact coach Shanae Bishop has had with the team.

“She’s really brought a lot to this group,” he said. “She gets a lot out of the kids and they really respond well to her.”