Adventure of the Week: Teamwork on water

If you never row, you'll never know ... the joys of the rowing stroke.

"It's kinda hard to explain," says rowing instructor Jeanne Bartkiewicz, 24, whose personal experience with rowing is something she hopes to reproduce with teenagers.

"I was doing three sports in high school," she says. "I went out rowing one day, just to check it out, and I quit all three other sports that day. It's just an incredible rush when you finally get all eight people together -- you feel like you're flying."

For 13- to 19-year-olds looking for a new summer experience, Bartkiewicz suggests the rowing classes she is coaching beginning Monday at Lake Washington in West Sacramento.

Junior Learn to Row class sessions, organized by the River City Rowing Club, run from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Monday-Friday (through July 20) and again Aug. 6-17 at the same time.

Cost of the classes is $100 for the two-week sessions, which will cover the fundamentals of rowing, learned in eight-person shells. Rowers will get on the water once a day, learning how and why the classic rowing stroke works. They also will learn boat handling and rowing commands.

Though it may look mechanical and repetitive from shore, Bartkiewicz says that it is anything but.

"It's like golf," she explains. "You can learn the full swing in three seconds and spend the rest of your life getting it perfect."

She adds that rowing offers a great education in teamwork. "Getting eight people to pull perfectly each time, together, is hard. It really teaches kids to work together, because working as hard as you can means nothing if the whole team isn't with you."

For more information: Visit www.rivercityrowing.org or e-mail Bartkiewicz at jmbartkiewicz@gmail.com.

For more advanced teenage rowers, there is the Junior Rowing Development Day Camp at the Sacramento State Aquatic Center at Lake Natoma. There, instructors will offer technical evaluations of strokes using videotape and analysis, along with lectures on nutrition, rigging and other aspects of competitive rowing.

Those rowers will be on the water at Lake Natoma three times a day during the four-day camp, which runs from Monday through next Thursday. Times are 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Monday and 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. for the remainder of the camp.

The cost is $325. To register, call the Aquatic Center at (916) 278-2842 or download the registration form from www.sacstateaquaticcenter.com.

About the writer:

• The Bee's David Watts Barton can be reached at dbarton@sacbee.com or at (916) 321-1154.