INTERNATIONAL ROWING TURNS PROFESSIONAL In 1957, Pete Archer, who was still on the city payroll, and Bill Lockyer started a rowing program at Long Beach State College, founded in 1949. Conditions for rowing on Alamitos Bay have always been nearly ideal. The weather year-round is wonderful, and even on windy days, the channels carved around Naples Island and to the east almost always afford smooth water somewhere. As the city grew, a breakwater was constructed to shelter the beaches adjacent to downtown, and it became possible for the adventurous and ambitious to row eights and even singles all the way from Alamitos Bay to Los Angeles Harbor, a twenty mile round trip, and more than once a Long Beach State eight took advantage of a windless early morning to row all the way to Catalina Island, twenty-six miles out into the Pacific Ocean off the California coast. During the 1960s, individual athletes who had been introduced to the sport in the local high school or college programs began joining Long Beach Rowing Association and competing on the national level in small boats. 1964 The first great era for LBRA began three thousand miles to the east at the 1964 Olympic Trials on the upgraded 2,000-meter course on Hunter Island Lagoon, outside New York City. Three improbable LBRA members participated: John Van Blom, Dick Krahenbuhl and Tom McKibbon. John Van Blom By the time of the Olympic Trials, Van Blom had just finished his sophomore year at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach. He was sixteen years old. Dick Krahenbuhl: “In late 1962, this high school freshman comes down to the boathouse and says, ‘I’d like to learn how to row.’ As I remember, they didn’t even put him in a wherry. They stuck him in a shell . . . and he just rowed away!”3882 Van Blom: “My folks had always had boats, so I’d always spent time around the water. We went to Catalina Island every weekend in the summertime. It was like two different cultures for me. I had my group of friends on the mainland with things that we did like surf and hang out or whatever, and over there I had a separate group of friends, and the things they valued were sailing and dinghy rowing, coming in and being able to pull up to a boat and turn at the last moment so you don’t bump the side and pull your oar out, that sort of thing. Those skills were valued. It’s a whole lot different from rowing a shell, but still there was some carryover. “On the 4th of July they used to have dinghy races on Catalina, and the kids would get out there and row. My Dad told me several years after the fact that he was watching the boats, and all these kids were really [gestures humping to the finish] and you could see the boats really bouncing, and he looked at my boat. “‘Why he’s not pulling hard enough!’ “My boat was just going along level and pulling out ahead. It wasn’t conscious, but I must have already figured out what made the boat track smoothly instead of [gestures a boat porpoising].”3883 “When I started rowing in 1962, our coach was Paul Manning. He was from Philadelphia, and from what he told us, there were a number of Mannings3884 involved in rowing there. “Paul had begun a high school program in 1961, coaching kids whose parents 3882 Krahenbuhl, personal conversation, 2007 3883 John Van Blom, personal conversation, 2007 3884 See Chapter 107. 1071
