Rice Crew moves to Buffalo Bayou

Imagine this: You’re a Rice student who has to wake up before 5 a.m., meet up with some of your friends in the Sallyport, drive 45 minutes to Clear Lake for a 90-minute workout … and then drive back to campus in Houston rush-hour traffic. And imagine doing that five or six days a week. Sounds pretty ridiculous, right?

That is exactly what Rice Crew, the university’s rowing club team, was doing.

The team’s volunteer coaches, David Alviar and Mike Matson ’12, knew what a strain it was on the program (think about the recruiting pitch to potential new members) and the students, so they embarked on a mission to move the team’s on-water home closer to campus.

Working with the Buffalo Bayou Partnership and the Texas Dragon Boat Association, the coaches spent hundreds of hours with other volunteers to construct a boathouse and a dock along Buffalo Bayou on Houston’s east side.

“To our knowledge, this is the first rowing boathouse in the Houston city limits ever, let alone the bayou,” Matson said.

“This is a labor of love,” Alviar said. “We are totally happy doing what we’re doing. We believe in what this can provide students that the classroom alone cannot. … This teaches them things like unity, support for each other and leadership, which is hard to reproduce anywhere else.”

“Buffalo Bayou Partnership is very excited about the Rice Crew and Texas Dragon Boat Association moving to Buffalo Bayou,” said Anne Olson, president of the Buffalo Bayou Partnership.  “Our goal is to activate the waterway as much as possible, and this fits right in with what we are doing. As time goes by we would love to work with the Rice Crew in developing a community boating program.  We think this would be very popular and help us draw even greater numbers of Houstonians to the bayou shores.”

The team began using the new facility — two conex containers that the coaches, students and volunteers fused together — at the beginning of this school year, and as you might expect, the students are grateful.

“(The coaches) are a godsend,” said Lovett College senior and team president Thanasis Kouris. “Literally, none of this would have been possible without them. They have so many more connections than we do, and they devote a lot of their time to this team, which is incredible. They do it for no pay. They do it because they love the sport, and they’d love to see rowing become a big thing in Houston. They’re fantastic.”

The Rice rowing team has been around since 1987 but recently was nearly dead, due to its former practice location. Additionally, Hurricane Ike put the team out of commission for a few years. Since Alviar and Matson began coaching the team last year, membership has tripled, and the team now boasts about 25 members.

Rice Crew comprises men and women who race as men’s and women’s teams, but they also practice and compete in co-ed races. For Rice – as with some other Southern-based universities – the team has both a fall and spring rowing season, so the students are training and competing throughout the school year.

Although the team’s training ground is now much closer to campus, the commitment is still quite hefty. Team members were quick to point out the benefits, though.

“I really love being around the people who are on the row team,” said team member and McMurtry College sophomore Annie Nordhauser. “Before my roommate wakes up in the morning, I’ve worked out, had fun with my friends, had a social life – all before morning classes.”

Alviar and Matson are striving to build upon what they’ve done already on Buffalo Bayou’s banks by fundraising to build permanent structures on the site and expand on it.

In December 2015, Alviar and Matson plan on being the first U.S. duo in four years — and the first Texan duo — to compete in the trans-Atlantic race called the Talisker Whiskey Atlantic Challenge, a 2,700-mile rowing race from the Canary Islands near the coast of Africa to Antigua in the Caribbean, all in hopes of raising money for the Rice Crew team and its Buffalo Bayou location.

“It’s the Everest of rowing,” Matson said. “It is one of the hardest events in racing. David and I will be at sea together on a 26-foot rowboat for 40 to 50 days rowing around the clock. When one of us is sleeping or eating, the other will be rowing.

“Because it’s so difficult, it draws attention,” he said. “Our goal is to draw attention for some of our fundraising goals, which include moving from the conex structure into a true boathouse.”

Rice Crew’s next race is Saturday (Oct. 25) in the Head of the Colorado in Austin. The race, which is affectionately called “Pumpkin Head” since it falls around Halloween, will include more than 300 entries from universities from the South and adult rowing teams.

Follow the team at ricecrew.org.