Still, the team sport presents individuals with the opportunity to excel and to reach the highest level of competition.

Take 27-year-old Megan Dirkmaat, for example. She had an inkling she wanted to row at age 10 while watching the Olympics on television. In 1993, during her senior year at San Jose's Lincoln High School, Dirkmaat was a top-performing rower with the LGRC juniors program. Today, Dirkmaat and crewmates with the U.S. National Rowing Team have aspirations for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Greece.

Dirkmaat credits LGRC with helping her get started and encouraging her to stay with the sport so that she could achieve a girlhood dream.

"From the day I joined the club, I fell in love with the sport, and never looked back," says Dirkmaat. After graduating from UC-Berkeley, continued hard work with the U.S. National Rowing Team netted her team a gold medal at the 2002 World Cup Championships in Munich, Germany. A qualifying finish at the 2003 World Championships in Milan, Italy, secured her team's position as an Olympic contender in the women's 8+ event.

Yale University sophomore John Petersen has been rowing for more than six years, including his first four with LGRC during his high school career at Bellarmine Prep. While he originally joined the club to keep fit during football's off-season, rowing soon took over.

"Rowing has become a lifestyle for me," says Petersen. "It demands a commitment to rigorous practice hours that are both physically and mentally challenging. My experience of rowing has taught me, as ex-Olympian Brad Lewis once said, 'You have to race and train like your life depends on it.' "

Petersen believes rowing helped him stand out among college applicants, some of whom may have had better grades or better SAT scores, but he acknowledges that working hard to get good grades made it easier for college coaches to support his application.

As a Los Gatos High School freshman, Graham Watts expected rowing to be more of a leisurely activity than a competitive sport.

"I think the realization came after I realized I was covering my hands in Band-Aids every evening after practice." Despite the blisters, Watts kept at it, and today he is pursuing a degree while he rows at UC-Berkeley, which has one of the nation's top collegiate rowing teams.

"Rowing is different than other sports in terms of its apparent simplicity," he says. "To onlookers, almost any crew's technique looks extremely easy to replicate. In reality it takes months to learn how to row the perfect stroke. In any race, you're expected to reproduce that stroke flawlessly, over 200 times, while pushing your body as hard as you can make it go."

Many of the LGRC junior alums return for a season to help coach up-and-coming rowers. Allison De Palma, who rowed with LGRC while a high school student at Notre Dame, is now on the U.S. Junior National Rowing Team and a sophomore at the University of Washington. Allison is hoping to be invited to compete at the World Championships in Spain and earn her chance to qualify for the next Olympics.

But despite their individual achievements in the sport, the rowing stars all understand the importance of the team concept—a concept they learned as beginners in the waters of the Lexington Reservoir.

Los Gatos Rowing Club was established in 1979 to build community through rowing. The club accepts all interested students, without regard to ability to pay or past athletic accomplishment. LGRC has worked with more than 2,000 students from 25 high schools from Burlingame to Gilroy. This year's members include 125 high school students in the juniors program and approximately 110 adults in the masters program.

The club's head coach, Wieslaw Kujda, is a former Olympic rower with more than 30 years of coaching experience and an impressive list of successes at the junior, collegiate and elite rowing levels. LGRC junior rowers have rowed for more than a dozen leading U.S. colleges and universities, as well as the U.S. National and U.S. Junior National rowing teams.

Kujda, respectfully yet affectionately referred to as "Coach Vees," took on the role of head coach for LGRC four years ago. A former coach for the Stanford University rowing team, Kujda admits he had to adjust to the slightly less intense atmosphere outside of collegiate rowing, where he says, "It was 100 percent business." Los Gatos wasn't exactly what Kujda was expecting, however.

"What I found was a well-organized club with a bit of an underachiever mentality, which surprised me because of the emphasis on competition and success in Silicon Valley," said Kujda, who with several assistant coaches guides the men's and women's junior and masters teams. "I saw a huge untapped potential in the club. It was like seeing a shiny new car that's only been taken out for a Sunday drive. I wasn't afraid to hop in the car, get on the road and peel out to see just how fast it could go."

Kujda is very clear about his goals for LGRC. "Ultimately, we want to be No. 1 in the country," he says. "Since we're not on campus, the challenge for us is to get the word out about the club. Kids don't really know what to make of rowing at first. Their first impression might be that it's boring. We have them do land training before they ever set foot in a boat, but once they're on the water, it becomes very fulfilling—they learn that what makes a rower great is on the inside."

"Everyone in the club has the competitive spirit inside them," adds Kujda. "We just help them see how far they can go."

There is something about rowing that turns even the most tentative novice into an unabashed, lifelong advocate for the sport. From high school students to retired business professionals, members of LGRC are quick to share their rowing triumphs and setbacks with a twinkle in the eye and a smile as wide as the Lexington Reservoir.

When Ali Seders first entered Los Gatos High School, Shelley Seders hoped her daughter would do well, find a sport she liked and have the chance to get into a good college.

"Rowing is a huge commitment for all the kids," says Shelley Seders. "It's school and rowing ... that's all, but they love it." According to Shelley, LGRC has helped put the Bay Area on the map in the world of collegiate rowing, traditionally an East Coast sport. College coaches now watch for emerging talent in West Coast clubs like LGRC.

Never having played a team sport before, Ali Seders began rowing with LGRC as a freshman.

"We have learned that rowing is about unity," she says. "Each person on our team depends on the rest."

Now a senior, Seders was recruited by UC-Berkeley and awarded a partial scholarship. Seders' erg scores (timed rowing exercises) placed her among Berkeley's top four women's picks. She and her teammates on LGRC's junior women's lightweight 8+ have won all but one race as the club prepares for regional championships in May.

Club rowers applaud the LGRC coaching philosophy. Workouts are varied. One day, coaches might focus on power pieces, or portions of a workout, to build strength and endurance. Another day they will zero in on stroke techniques, or seat-race strategies, in which rowers take different seat positions in a boat to see how the change in lineup might impact the race result.

"Once you get the balance down, everything gets easier," says Los Gatos sophomore Jonathan Moultrup. As for catching a crab (when a rower's oar is out of sync, it may catch him or her quite forcefully in the chest and push the rower off balance), it's bound to happen sometime, but you hope you don't end up in the water."

According to Cole Sickler, also a sophomore at LGHS, rowing is harder than it looks, both physically and mentally. "You've got to love pain to be a rower, and some nights with little sleep." Sickler's older sister, Brett, is an LGRC alum and an accomplished rower on the U.S. Junior National team.

Saratoga resident Jan Hoover first tried rowing when she heard about LGRC through club veteran Kirstin Cravens. Her youngest of two sons was a high school senior, and she'd decided rowing was the perfect sport for an "empty nester."

"With rowing," says Hoover, "you can exercise every part of your body and still get it done by 8 a.m., and it's a lot more fun out on the water than stuck in a gym."

Hoover says the LGRC coaches have a passion for the sport, and head coach Kujda is "an incredible coach with a good eye who doesn't miss a thing that happens out there on the water."

Masters rowers with LGRC compete and frequently win top rankings in regional, national and international competitions across the U.S. and abroad. Last year, LGRC masters were ranked third in the Masters National regatta.

Norma Andreadis got involved with LGRC when her son Andreas joined the club in 2003. At first she served as a volunteer, but once she completed the Learn-to-Row program six months later, she was sold on the sport and joined its masters program.

"LGRC brings benefits to the community, especially our young people, with a natural and healthy outlet for all that energy," says Andreadis. "For masters rowers, this is a sport that can be enjoyed by aging bodies. We also promote the spirit of the club through our community-outreach programs."

LGRC continues its tradition of community outreach, with programs for The Foundry School, Downtown College Prep, Child Advocates of Santa Clara County, EMQ Children & Family Services and a new Row to Recovery program for cancer survivors.

According to LGRC club president Shirley Reekie, "Our outreach program is completely funded by the club, and it serves many special groups who can really benefit from the rowing experience."

The outreach program only emphasizes the very nature of the Los Gatos Rowing Club and brings home that familiar refrain: "There is no 'I' in crew."