SEATTLE – How serious is this guy? That was the question Washington State crew coach Arthur Ericsson had about David Worley and his commitment to rowing.
It turned out that Worley was very serious. So serious that he could be rowing in the Olympics someday.
“He’s really good,” said Bob Ernst, the head men’s crew coach at the University of Washington. “If he follows the right path and stays healthy, he’ll be an Olympian.”
And Worley really wants to row in the Olympics.
“Absolutely,” he said, when asked if he was committed to reaching that goal.
And he’s not talking about the 2012 Olympics. He’s aiming for China in 2008.
Until the fall of 2004 – his junior year of college – he had never sat in a racing shell.
Worley, who grew up in Oak Harbor, called his dad one day and told him that he was going to try out for the rowing team at Washington State, though he knew nothing about the sport.
What he did know was that he had the size for it: he stood 6 feet, 6 inches and weighed 230 pounds.
And he had the strength.
But how committed was he to rowing? It’s a demanding sport. Early morning workouts, sometimes two-a-day workouts.
On-the-water muscle burns, off-the-water muscle burns.
Ericsson wondered about his temperament. “My impression of him was that he was kind of an easygoing guy,” the Cougars coach said. “He came into rowing fairly nonchalantly. His friend and he said, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s try it.’”
Not until midway through his second year of rowing did Worley convince his coach that he was fully committed to the sport. And it took an incident during a 60-minute test that the team was taking on ergometers – or rowing machines – that made the difference. “Thirty minutes into the piece, I hear one of the rowers talking,” said Ericsson, who was also taking part in the test and couldn’t tell who it was.
He found out. It was Worley.
Afterward, he told his athletes that they shouldn’t even have the energy to talk during an erg test, let alone choose to. And he specifically said to Worley, “When you are asked to pull as hard as you can, are you going to be able to do it? From that point on, I don’t think I ever doubted that he would be pulling as hard as he could every stroke.”
You pull hard and you pay to play. Because men’s crew is a club sport at WSU, the Cougar lads have to draw from their own bank accounts to participate.
And the effort they put in is, in Worley’s estimation, no less than what is expended on the waters of Lake Washington by the Huskies.
Ericsson knew he had a good athlete in Worley. And the Huskies’ Ernst was to find out in the summer of 2006 just how good Worley was.
Worley came to an Ernst-run United States Rowing Development Camp at the UW. He had already earned a degree in political science but had decided to enroll at WSU for another year so he could continue rowing.
His life was about to take a dramatic turn, after an inauspicious start to camp.
“He came over here as ‘Cougar Nation,’” Ernst said with a touch of amusement, “and the first week or so I thought I should ask this kid to wear a life jacket and a bicycle helmet when he went in the boat. He wasn’t rowing very well, it didn’t look pretty.”
But every time Worley was put in a pairs with a different guy, his boat won.
That was in the “B” group. So Ernst moved him up to the “A” group.
“I put him in with a JV guy at Washington,” the coach said. “Nobody touched them the rest of the summer.”
The summer ends, Ernst sends Worley off with some encouraging words and a “whatever I can do for you, let me know.”
About a month into fall classes, Worley calls Ernst and says there is something he can do for him. Could the coach find out if there’s a chance Worley could transfer to the UW and row for the Huskies?
A week later, Worley was attending classes in Seattle.
To be eligible, Worley had to take 12 credits. He signed up for 15. And now will earn another political science degree from his new school.
Which is cool. But not as cool as this. In his new colors, he’s rowing for the top-ranked varsity eight in the country.
Is this guy living a dream or what? Three years ago, he’d never been in a boat. Now he’s rowing with world-class athletes and “kicking butt,” in the words of his coach. “I mean, he’s as good as anybody in there.”
“The amount of progress he’s made since Christmas is incredible,” Ernst said.
He wonders if Worley knew what he was getting into when he transferred.
“To be honest with you, I don’t think he had a very realistic idea of how good the other guys were here,” Ernst said. “I mean, I think he thought he was going to be the best guy here. Right away. And that’s one of the things that makes him good. Nobody’s going to tell him that he’s not good. He’s not verbose, he’s not a braggart, but he’s very self-confident. And he came over here and he immediately started performing.”
For him to come as far as he has in so short a time is a remarkable feat. “That’s for sure,” said boatmate Aljosa Corovic, who is from Serbia. “I’ve been rowing for 12 years. You need time. He’s a pretty big achiever.”
Corovic started rowing when he was 12. And what was Worley doing at the same age? “Riding four-wheelers,” he said with a grin. “When I was really young, playing tennis and soccer.”
At Oak Harbor High School, the only sport he played was tennis, and then for only one season. So he isn’t used to being cheered, as he and his teammates were when they beat arch-rival California last Saturday.
Worley admitted to a case of nerves in the days leading up to the race. He didn’t get much sleep and when he did sleep, he dreamed about the race and it was almost a nightmare. “I don’t think I ever finished the race,” he said.
Today, the cheers will be even louder as thousands line the Montlake Cut for the Windermere Cup pitting the Huskies against Purdue and the University of Waikato, from New Zealand.
May a kind reality, not an unkind dream, rule again.
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