How does a school start a varsity sport from scratch and, in a few years, make it a conference and national contender? If a formula for such a thing exists, University of Minnesota women’s athletics seems to have it. Soccer kicked off as a varsity sport in 1993; five years later it had two Big Ten titles and three NCAA tournament appearances to its credit. The hockey team opened play in 1997 and won the unofficial national title in 2000.

Dipping its oars in the water for the first time in the fall of 2000, the Gopher rowing team is just one of 50 that have sprung up at colleges and universities nationwide in the past five years. In its first 18 months, however, it has shown that it is one of the best of the new teams and has a shot at reaching the NCAA’s 12-team championship regatta within another 18 months.

"I expect us to be winning some major races this spring," says coach Wendy Davis. "[Then] we can start doing some real recruiting of people who otherwise would only be looking at Michigan and Wisconsin. We were only 10 seconds back of Wisconsin [at the Head of the Iowa Regatta in October], and they’ve been a high-caliber program for 30 years."

One of the keys to a successful start-up program is finding the right coach. But attracting the right coach, one with the experience and patience to take on the challenge, requires a real commitment to building a successful program. In each of the three newest women’s programs, administrators started with the promise "that we were not just adding slots, but adding to the family. We don’t want to create an orphan sister," says Chris Voelz, director of women’s intercollegiate athletics. Adding to the family is important for the University. Federal Title IX legislation currently says that colleges must provide proportional opportunities for both men and women athletes. "Yes, rowing, like hockey and soccer, played a role in our gender-equity plan," Voelz says. "But we’re not just creating opportunity; we’re creating equitable, meaningful opportunity."

To do that, Voelz assigned her former senior associate director, Donna Olson, to investigate what it would take to create a solid rowing program. Olson went East, where most of the top programs are located, and met with experts. Among them was Rudy Vespoli, one of the best racing boat builders in the world. Vespoli, in turn, helped convince Davis to look at the University of Minnesota. Davis had been a coach at Stanford, a top West Coast program, for a decade, then took over at Yale in 1993. There, her teams had top-five national finishes in each of her four years. She left Yale in 1997 to spend more time with her two young children. She coached individual rowers for a few years but then felt ready to return to college coaching. "Donna Olson showed [Rudy Vespoli] what they were planning to do with the program," Davis recalls. "He called me and said, ‘You know, you really should apply there. This is the real deal.’"

Voelz says Wendy Davis was "one of those names that kept coming up in different circles."

Davis applied with low expectations but soon became excited. "It’s a great department; they don’t do anything half-baked here. When they added [rowing], they added it with the expectation that we would be vying for top five in the country," Davis says. "I was amazed. By the end of [the interview] I called John [her husband] and said ‘We’re going to have to put our house on the market if I get offered this job.’"

Once at Minnesota, Davis worked to get the basics in place—purchasing equipment, configuring her staff, discussing budgets, and looking for athletes. Minnesota has a long tradition of club rowing, and women’s rowing was once a varsity sport before being resurrected in 2000. "The club athletes [who came out for the varsity team] deserve a lot of credit," Davis says. "They had to adjust to much higher expectations as varsity athletes." The team’s best showing last year may have been at the NCAA regional meet. Ranked 18th and with seven former club rowers, the varsity eight-person boat finished ninth, just a few seconds out of sixth. The Gophers’ novice boat, for first-year rowers, took second in its race. Current senior Amber Riopel of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, was named to the all–Big Ten second team.

The one non-club rower was Beth Hornby, a junior from Winnipeg, Manitoba, who made all–Big Ten first team. The recruiting coup of the first year, Hornby "absolutely fell in our laps," Davis says. "She called me in June of ’99 inquiring about scholarship information. I didn’t know her from Adam."

Hornby comes from a rowing family. Her father rowed and is now an official with Canada’s national rowing organization. Beth Hornby began racing at 14, "an early age in this sport," she says. But there was only one problem: Hornby was a lightweight sculler, meaning she is a smaller athlete whose experience is in one- and two-person boats in which the rower uses two oars. In the four- and eight-person racing shells, each rower takes one oar, the boats move faster, and the stroke cadence is quicker. Still, no problem.

"She adjusted very quickly. She’s a good racer and just what we needed," Davis says. "She knew what she was doing and was very, very patient with those club athletes when they were making the transition. . . . She stayed upbeat, never got down on the other rowers."

Hornby’s tenacity, hard work, and skill compensated for her smaller stature. "Size is very important in rowing, although fitness is more important," Davis says. "What she did was remarkable. It was like playing center on a Big Ten basketball team at 5–8."

"Coach Wendy really pushed me," Hornby says. "I’m used to competing against other lightweights and smaller club rowers. All through the winter she kept on having me challenge bigger girls. I told her I wanted to improve, and she told me how."

After a winter of lifting weights, rowing-machine workouts, and cross-country skiing for endurance work, followed by a spring of racing, Hornby went home to Winnipeg for the summer and earned six medals in the national regatta. As a result, she was named Canada’s female Sculler of the Year for 2001.

The new rowers who made up the novice boat last year, the one that took second at the regional race, are moving up to challenge for varsity spots now. Even as new rowers they have what Davis is looking for. Since few high schools have rowing teams, "we’re trying to recruit swimmers and cross-country skiers and people who have a good physiology base from high school but who didn’t get the [rowing] coaching," Davis says. "Next year we’ll be looking at basketball players, because size is important."

Rowing is hard work, requiring hours of both strength and stamina training, individual technique work and team coordination. The team aspect particularly appeals to Hornby. "When you are rowing at once with all those people, you want to pull hard for everyone else," she says. "You sort of feed off each other."

The rowers also bonded last year when their novice coach, Kerry O’Keefe, became ill with cancer. Voelz credits Davis for helping the students through the summer and fall, especially after O’Keefe died in September. "To see her manage a team, a staff, and this huge challenge of a death in the family really showed me what she is made of," Voelz says. "She did it with such grace."

Davis sees only a few obstacles to becoming a top national program in very short order. "One of the key steps, frankly, is building a permanent boathouse," she says. While that was in the discussion stage when Davis arrived, all such facility planning is suspended until the athletics financing crisis can be addressed (see accompanying article). "It’s not only for recruiting but for safety’s sake. . . . We can’t be in a tent. It’s cold. You come off the water and you are more wet than any other athlete. It takes about 20 minutes from the time they end a workout until they are released and they’re just getting colder and colder, and then they get on bikes and ride home."

But the setting, Davis says, is perfect. "With the Mississippi River cutting through campus, very protected and beautiful, it’s ideal," she says. "If it’s flooding we’ve got 10,000 lakes to choose from."

With the support she is getting, the program is poised to move up. "We’re moving as fast as I could have hoped. I really think that if everything goes just right, certainly by next year we could get an NCAA bid. I would hope to get one next year." That kind of expectation from a new Gopher women’s program is not unusual. It’s all part of the formula.

Chris Coughlan-Smith is senior editor for Minnesota.