Kent teen eyes junior national crew team

Just two years after taking up rowing, Grace Herbert has her eyes set on one day making the women’s junior national crew team.

The 16-year-old Kent girl, who will be a sophomore at Holy Names Academy in Seattle this fall, took a step toward achieving her goal by attending a three-week junior national team development camp earlier this summer in Connecticut.

Herbert was one of about 40 girls from throughout the country invited to attend the development camp after going to an identification camp in Seattle earlier this year.

Herbert joined the Holy Names rowing team her freshman year.

“I needed a sport to do in the fall because I swim and swimming was in the winter …,” she said. “It (crew) is a no cut sport so anyone can try it.”

Herbert said she wasn’t very good at rowing when she first began but has improved a lot and now enjoys the sport. The development camp was beneficial, she said.

“The problem with me isn’t really the raw power,” she said. “It is just technique and transferring it in the boat. I think it (the camp) helped me a lot with that. There were a lot of coaches and not that many athletes so they were really able to give you a lot of specific commentary.”

The training was intensive, Herbert said.

“Basically we just got up in the morning, had breakfast, rowed, came back, had lunch, worked out again, had a snack, rowed, had dinner, went to bed,” she said. “It was more work than I thought. I didn’t think it was going to be as challenging in terms of how much rowing we were going to be doing. I had never done the system of more than one practice a day so that took a little getting used to.”

Herbert had the fastest erg score at her development camp. Erg is short for ergometer, which is an indoor rowing machine. Erg scores are calculated based on the time it takes to complete 2,000 meters, which is the standard distance in rowing.

Waiting, hoping for the call

Herbert hopes to be invited to the junior national team’s high performance camp next year and then to the selection camp the following year. Members of the junior national team are chosen from the selection camp. Herbert has two years of eligibility for the junior national team remaining.

Herbert plans to focus on crew this coming school year. In the past she has split her time between crew and swimming.

“I am going to focus on crew because I see myself getting further in that than in swimming,” she said. “A ton of people swim. It is not hard to find fast swimmers in terms of colleges and national teams but it is a lot harder to find fast rowers just because not as many people are into the sport.”

She hopes to qualify for varsity this year.

Herbert enjoys the team aspect of crew.

“It (training) is so hard but it makes you so much better. There are so many other people doing it with you because it just helps,” she said. “Some of the workouts we do are so hard. If I wasn’t sitting on the erg next to my teammates, I would probably just get off and be like, ‘I am so done. I can’t move. I am over it.’ Just having everyone else doing it with you, you are like, ‘I can’t stop because they are sitting next to me and they are doing it so I have to do it.'”

Herbert usually rows on an eight- or four-person sweep boat. Sweep is done with one oar while sculling is done with two.

“I mostly sweep,” she said. “I have been learning how to scull. Sculling is easier generally for shorter people who have small arms just because it is harder to get both your arms in.”

At nearly 5-foot-10, some might consider Herbert to be on the tall side, but she said that is not the case in rowing.

“I am kind of on the shorter end,” she said. “There are a lot of girls who are at least 6 feet tall and some that were like 6-4 who were at selection camp.”

Herbert prefers racing in an eight-person boat.

“A lot of people hate eights but I like eights because having more people in the boat makes is more set and sturdy,” she said. “I think it is more fun to have more people. Rowing is kind of the ultimate team sport because you literally have to do exactly the same thing as the person in front of you. I feel like it is more fun in eights because it is more satisfying when you all get going and you are going fast and you are going together because there are so many people.”