Kirsten Mathers was about to get into a racing shell for a regatta on Lake Stevens recently when someone shouted at her, “Do it like you drive a car.”
That would be … fast.
And, with gusto. Like everything else she does: Snow-skiing. Snowboarding. Whitewater rafting. Surfing.
She has no low gear.
Neither did her boat that day. It looked as if it were propelled by a powerful outboard motor, rather than eight strong and efficient Western Washington University novice women rowers, so swift, so smooth and so domineering were they.
Elizabeth Armstrong / The Herald
The Vikings could have drunk a toast to their victory by the time the second boat came across the finish line.
A few hours later, Mathers was back in a boat – a four-person shell this time – and once again triumphant.
Less than 24 hours later, she would be on the ski slopes. “Two more weeks at Mount Baker, then I’ll switch to my summer mode,” she said. “Surfing.”
Busy lady, this young woman from Camano Island.
During the week, she rises at 4 a.m. and is in a racing shell on Lake Samish an hour later. “That’s my favorite part of the day, even though it’s hard and it’s cold,” she said. “It’s kind of cool to have worked out for two hours before anyone else has rolled out of bed.”
On weekends during the winter, she teaches skiing and snowboarding at Mt. Baker. And somehow, she finds time to squeeze in a full load of studies at Western.
“You kind of figure out how your body works,” she said. “You’re OK for two and a half weeks, then you have a day when you just want to sleep. Since I started rowing I’ve slept through more classes than I ever have. I’m also getting better grades.”
That was the objective when she took up rowing last fall. “I was having a little trouble focusing in school the end of last year,” she said.
Her mother had read about the Viking women’s crew team that won the NCAA Division II national championship last spring and suggested that Kirsten might want to give rowing a try. “I was looking for a group of people focused on a goal,” Kirsten said. “Rowers are pretty dedicated people. I don’t think any of my friends would wake up at 4 to go out and play.”
They “play” whatever the weather: rain, sleet or snow. “I’m a morning person but we have some pretty extreme mornings,” she said. “I think what got me in the winter was when it was freezing cold outside and the oars and the docks and everything were frozen. You wore so many layers you could hardly row.”
What’s so remarkable is that, in her first year of rowing, this 20-year-old junior has earned a seat in the varsity four boat, which is ranked No. 1 in the West Regional. “She’s picked it up pretty well,” Vikings coach John Fuchs said. “That happens every now and then with one of these whippersnappers.”
At Lake Stevens, she rowed in the novice boats to help the Vikings win the Northwest Collegiate Rowing team championship. Saturday, she will row in the Opening Day Regatta at the University of Washington.
She is a good athlete, this lady is, tall – a shade under 6 feet – and strong, with the coordination it takes to make a boat move smoothly across the water. As a student at Stanwood High School, she participated in volleyball and tennis, though she said she was “never that into it.”
What she was really into were skiing and snowboarding … during the winter, that is. Last summer, she took up another sport: whitewater rafting. She’s a guide for Hobo Expeditions, out of Glacier. “She picked it up super fast,” said Ava Gonzalez, co-owner of the business. “She just learns really fast.”
It seems anything she puts her mind to, she grasps fast.
Fast is how she goes through life.
When she was 1, she swam in the Snake River with a swim ring. When she was 21/2, she was skiing. By the time she was 16, she was driving up the highway to the Mount Baker ski resort with her father, Chris, probably a little slower than she does it today. “Not over 75,” she laughed. “A lot of times I drive quick when I’m going up late. Cliffs on one side, rocks on the other.”
Her father no doubt taught her well how to negotiate tricky terrain. “With my dad, there’s a lesson to everything,” she said.
“If it’s driving, he teaches me about driving.”
A few years ago, Chris started racing in amateur events at Seattle International Raceway with his friend, Randy Goins, a driving instructor. Because Kirsten hung out with her dad a lot – he taught her to shoot and took her duck hunting, though the only things she has ever “shot at” were clay pigeons; he also showed her how to take apart a boat engine (“I like getting my hands dirty”) – it seemed inevitable that she would someday find herself behind the wheel of a car on a racetrack.
Sure enough, a couple years ago, she started piloting her dad’s Corvette around the serpentine track now known as Pacific Raceway. Like everything else she puts her all into, she learned quickly. “She beats up on the guys on the racecourse,” Goins said.
He has trained women to become world-class drivers and believes Kirsten has that kind of talent. “She has flat innate ability,” he said. “Kind of an inner balance concentration level. That’s what it’s all about.”
So what kind of speed are we talking about? One hundred and thirty mph on the straightaway. And what does that translate to on the highway? “She’s never had a ticket,” her mother, Kristine, said proudly.
Now that she can dominate on water as well as on land, might the sky be next? “I would love to fly,” Kirsten said. “I guess whatever I’m doing, I want to try my best.”
Her grandfather, Ken Anderson, has a word to describe her: “Renaissance” lady. Someone cultivated in the physical as well as the mental disciplines.
She is every bit of that. She is a student. She is an athlete. She is someone who cares about her fellow human beings.
In her weekend job, she has taught physically disabled people to ski and snowboard. “Even if you’re having a (bad) day,” she said, “it’s cool to introduce people to something they’ve never experienced before.”
One young man with spina bifida learned to ski, and his family was so inspired that everyone in it took up the sport.
Of course, with Kirsten, every season has a sport, and summer will take her to the beaches of Oregon and Washington where she will try to catch some waves on her surfboard.
In the past two years, she has broken two boards and come away with two pairs of stitches. “A most humbling sport,” she sighed.
Humble, you have not seen the last of Kirsten Mathers.
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