Local duo row their way to Youth Nationals

While some graduates head off to Hawaii or Disneyland for their senior trip, Petaluma High School graduate Ryan Cardiff couldn’t be happier to be heading for Mercer, N.J. this week.

Mercer is a nice place, right near Princeton University, but it isn’t the location that makes the trip special for Cardiff, it is what he will be doing there that has him excited.

He will be competing, along with boatmate Ben Holm in the National Youth Championship Regatta. The pair will face the best junior Men’s Pair teams in the country in the three-day regatta.

To reach the Nationals is a rare occasion for any team from a small club like the North Bay Rowing Club. Only the top two or three finishers in regionally qualifying races, depending on the size of the region, move on to the Nationals.

The North Bay Rowing Club duo finished fourth in the Southwest Regional Championships, with the top two teams qualifying for Nationals, but the top two teams chose to participate in other events and the NBRC team, after petitioning, was given an at-large berth in the Nationals.

Both team members have been rowing for about three years, and both got into the sport through the recruitment of friends.

Cardiff played football as a freshman at Petaluma. He said football was OK, but when several of his high school friends encouraged him to join them at the rowing club, he decided to give it a try.

“I found it way more rewarding than I thought it would be,” he said. “You can see your progress and measure your improvement. I like that.”

Both rowers agree that the sport requires more effort and commitment than they could have imagines.

Holm, a new senior at Maria Carrillo High School, also became involved in the sport through friends. “I didn’t know what I was getting into,” he admitted. “It was really intense.”

Both started as members of 4+ teams (four rowers plus a coxswain). It was coach Will Whalen’s decision to take his two fastest rowers and put them together in a two-man boat. To say it worked well is an understatement.

Holm said it is more than the sum of their individual skills that makes the pair a strong team. “It wouldn’t work if we weren’t friends,” he explained.

“We have a lot of energy when we work well together,” said Cardiff. “Both of us are really motivated.”

While they work well as a team in the boat and are good friends outside the competition, they have contrasting personalities.

“Ben doesn’t talk much and I talk all the time,” explained Cardiff. Holm nodded his head in agreement.

While this weekend will probably be the duos last week as a youth team, they both intend to keep rowing. Cardiff has been recruited by Stanford and will compete next year for the Cardinal. “When I started I wasn’t sure how high I could go. Now I plan to row all four years at Stanford. Rowing is something that lets me express my competitive nature in a healthy forum,” he explained.

Holm still has a year left at Rancho Cotate before he decides on a college, but where ever he goes, he plans to continue rowing. “I would like to go to a top level rowing school and row all four years,” he said.

Both have natural talent, but rowing on their level takes more than talent.

“Their drive and their work ethic is what sets them apart, that and their ability to keep going even when it gets difficult and challenging.”

The coach said the pair’s advancement to the Nationals is a big step for the entire North Bay Rowing Club.

“It is a huge honor,” he said. “It is an extremely hard goal go achieve. It means a lot to the whole club.”

He said it also points to how far the club has progressed in his four years coaching. “Jn the first three years we only had one boat in the finals at regionals. This year we had three,” he pointed out.

The co-ed rowing club has now grown to more than 60 members.