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Sports
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Rowing Home
by Paul Sweeney
The same cooperation among individuals
that propels a rowing shell is the spirit surrounding the Tufts
University crew team’s recent relocation to the Malden
River.
A partnership between Tufts Rowing, directed by Gary Caldwell,
and Combined Properties, a real estate investment and development
firm in Malden, has brought forth great progress for Tufts and
the city of Malden. For Tufts, which had been rowing on Boston’s
Charles River out of rented space inside Harvard University’s
boathouse, the new facility has allowed the program to become
fully functional. With Tufts on the river, Combined Properties
has seen the potential to develop a forgotten waterway into
a recreational and environmental resource that could be a boon
to the city. The company’s support of the venture includes
the free lease of land for Tufts’ current storage facility.
“I don’t know in the rowing world of a parallel
to this,” said Caldwell, the head coach since 1990. “A
private real estate company has gone out of its way, of its
own volition, to help a rowing program come of age. From a standpoint
of civic responsibility, we are an example that it’s possible
to take a long-neglected and ofttimes abused river and make
it useful to the people who live adjacent to it.”
The root of the story dates back 30 years. Rowing in high school
had been a watershed experience for Chris Maietta, who competed
at Phillips Academy in Andover during the early 1970s. Now the
vice president of business development and marketing at Combined
Properties, he first discovered the possibility of rowing on
the Malden River at a company-sponsored fireworks display that
was set up along the river to celebrate Malden’s 350th
birthday during the summer of 1999.
“It was really an accident because I had been working
here for maybe five or six years and I never paid any attention
to the river,” Maietta said. “We always thought
of it as kind of a ditch back there. The Malden River area has
always been heavily industrialized, with big factories belching
out smoke and making industrial products. The river was certainly
not thought of as much of a place for recreation.”
During a ride on a motorboat, Maietta noticed the river was
flat, calm and reasonably wide. Memories of his love for rowing
rushed back to him. The initial idea was to help a local high
school start a team so that its students could enjoy the same
experience. He made phone calls to rowing programs in the area
looking to borrow equipment. Caldwell was the first to call
him back.
Within a few days, after exploring the site, Caldwell proposed
moving the Tufts program to the river. It was a much-needed
move. Caldwell had been looking for an alternative site that
would allow the program to expand. The Charles had become crowded
with boats, and Tufts was operating under strict time and space
constraints in Harvard’s boathouse. In the fall of 1999,
Combined Properties provided a warehouse for Tufts to store
its equipment and the program began using the river on a trial
basis.
The athletes weren’t impressed at first. The Charles,
and Harvard’s Newell Boathouse, are international centers
of rowing and provide a spectacular view of the Boston skyline.
The Malden River had the view, but not much else.
“The Charles lives and breathes rowing,” said Mike
Friedburg, a senior from Pittsford, New York, who sits in the
stroke seat for the varsity 8. “The aesthetic value was
wonderful. I can’t speak for everyone, but to leave that
to move to a neglected river wasn’t pleasing.”
Tufts and Combined Properties began working on a lease agreement.
In the meantime, Tufts returned to the Charles for the 2000–01
season. Then, in May 2001, Combined Properties made a long-term
commitment of land close to the river to Tufts. The program
moved there full time for the 2001–02 season and put up
its current transitional storage structure.
The benefits for both parties soon emerged. The Tufts program,
which consists of approximately 85 members and ten boats, has
twice as much space as it had at Harvard, where it had been
housed since the fall of 1980. The Malden water is calmer and
less populated than the Charles, which means less practice and
race time lost to bad weather and more time for coaches to teach
rather than worrying about oncoming crews.
The river is quickly becoming a place where other programs want
to row. Tufts hosted four races there in spring 2002. This year
Trinity College and the Coast Guard Academy are moving their
30-year-old Mason-Downes Cup race from New London, Connecticut,
to Malden. With the course passing just 50 feet offshore as
it heads down the finishing stretch, it is a great location
for spectators. The Tufts men’s varsity 8 is undefeated
on the river.
“There’s not a question from a competitive standpoint
if you look at how our overall squad performed last year that
it was the most successful year we’ve had since probably
1995,” Caldwell said. “A good part of that is because
of the quality of the rowing experience, the actual amount of
usable water time we had, and the more efficient use of time
that we were able to utilize coaching.”
Turning a negative into a positive, Friedburg organized a river
cleanup day in April 2002. Sixty-five rowers and two sets of
parents collected trash along the riverbank. Tufts is also helping
to establish a rowing program at the local Mystic Valley Charter
School. All of this activity and goodwill on the river has city
leaders smiling, Maietta said.
“Having an institution of Tufts’ caliber here on
a daily basis, engaging in this activity which has so much history
behind it, has a positive effect that it lends to the city,”
he said.
With approval and funding, Tufts will build a permanent boathouse
and landscape a large area along the riverbank. Until then,
they have their own facility and their own river that allows
them to practice and compete when and how they want.
“It gives us more ownership of our rowing experience,”
said senior Rebecca Clark, a member of the women’s varsity
8 from Seattle. “All of the bigger programs have their
own facility. It’s integral to success. This puts us on
the map.” |
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