Rowing around the world

Alex Japhet's journey in rowing began three years ago, when a friend suggested she might like the sport. Dubious at first, she was still intrigued enough to try.

A few weeks and a few blisters later, "it was hard to know if it was something I wanted to stick with," she recalled. "But I decided it was worth it and I've been hooked ever since."

To this point, her journey has been mostly along the Snohomish River - up and back, countless times, with teammates from the Everett Rowing Association. But this summer the 17-year-old Edmonds girl will enjoy a journey of a different kind.

Japhet, a 2007 graduate of Mukilteo's Kamiak High School, was recently named to the United States junior national rowing team, which is bound for Beijing, China, for the Aug. 7-11 World Junior Rowing Championships. She was one of 15 young women selected, with the top eight, including Japhet, chosen for the eight-oared scull.

As a life event, her selection "was huge," she said by telephone from Lake Placid, N.Y., where she is training with the team.

"For a few days leading up to the final cuts, I was going back and forth between feeling confident and not," she said. "I felt I was performing well on the water, but it didn't really hit me that I might be on the team that was going to China."

Now, she said, "I'm excited and also nervous. Once we get there, I think it's going to hit me that not only are we in China, but there are all these other teams there from countries like Romania and Germany. I think it's going to be kind of overwhelming, but I'm sure I'm going to be excited."

Not a bad way to spend a summer, particularly for someone like Japhet, who has, by her own admission, a "ridiculous addiction" to rowing. The cravings kick in whenever she passes a lake or a slowly moving river, causing her "to imagine," she said, "what you could be doing out there in a boat."

Her first post-high school summer, in fact, will be spent rowing and doing little else. In early June she traveled to Cincinnati with her Everett teammates for the USRowing Youth National Championships (the team's eight-oared women's boat placed fifth), and from there she continued on to Connecticut for the junior national tryout camp.

After her selection, Japhet and her new junior national teammates headed to Lake Placid for training. Later this month they will be in New Jersey for additional workouts before leaving for China.

She is not due back in Edmonds until Aug. 13, and 12 days later she departs for Durham, N.C., and Duke University, where she has received a full rowing scholarship.

Dan Japhet, Alex's dad, credits his daughter's success in rowing to a combination of physical talent and mental prowess.

"She has always been competitive, even when she was just a small kid, a baby," he said. "She had two older brothers, and her goal in life was to show that she can keep up with them. ... She is extremely competitive and extremely focused, and she is also blessed with height (5-feet-10) and strength. When you put it all together, what you have is an extremely competitive, focused person."

Japhet is by no means the first Everett rower to be named to a junior national team. According to team director Matt Lacey, she is the sixth to be chosen in the past five years, and that number includes Adrienne Mecham of Lake Stevens and Sarah Gribler of Marysville in 2006, when the U.S. team placed second in the world (both received scholarships to row at the University of Michigan).

These kinds of accomplishments, Lacey said, "say a lot about our coaches and the program. ... When kids come in, and if they have the athletic talent and the desire to excel, we have the coaches and the programs to get them where they want to go."

In Lake Placid, the team is on the water twice a day, plus doing additional weight and cardiovascular training.

"It's a lot of hard work," Japhet said, "and we're dog tired at the end of the day. But then you start thinking that you're going to China and you're signing up for a visa, and the whole thing is just crazy. It's kind of shocking."

In China, the rowers will compete at the lavish new Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park, site of the 2008 Summer Olympics rowing and canoeing events. The junior worlds "will be kind of a test drive" for the Olympics, Japhet said, "but for us there's nothing practice about it."

It will be, in other words, another leg in what has become a truly remarkable journey for Japhet.

"Three years ago," she said, "if someone had told me I had all these opportunities ahead of me, I probably would not have believed them. I'm still kind of amazed by it all."