Row, row, row …

EVERETT — How serious is Chris Archer about rowing?

Serious enough to drive from his home in Anacortes six days a week to participate for the Everett Rowing Association.

He leaves Anacortes High School a little after 2 in the afternoon and arrives at the boathouse on the Snohomish River 70 minutes later.

“If he wants something,” said his mother, Lisa, “he goes for it.”

Last year about this time, he wanted his driver’s license. But the only way he could fit the six-week driver’s education program into his already tight schedule was to take lessons from 7 to 9 p.m. So each night after he got back to Anacortes from rowing practice (to which his parents drove him), he would jump in a car to learn how to drive.

“He’s very focused,” his mother said.

He’s like a lot of other kids who engage in rowing. It’s hard and it’s demanding. No weaklings or uncommitted need apply. Beginning in early February, the Everett rowers work out three hours a day, which includes 11/2 hours on the water five days a week and another 11/2 hours working on rowing machines, lifting weights, running, and doing various calisthenics only a masochist could dream up.

On Saturday mornings, they go for “only” two hours.

They train virtually year around, taking part in indoor workouts during the winter.

From the moment the athletes started arriving for practice at 2:30 on a recent day, they were busy doing something to the beat of blaring music. A casual visitor had to be alert or he could have gotten run down or rocked in the head with a boat being carried down to the dock.

“There’s always quite a buzz in the boathouse,” said Pasha Spencer, the director of the ERA and a former rower at the University of Washington

This time of year, it’s still cold when the rowers hit the water at 3 o’clock but 15 minutes into a workout, they’re sweating and shedding clothes. Not that they wear a lot to begin with.

The neat thing about this sport: Every kid gets to row. He or she might not be in the fastest boat but they go out on the water every day to try to refine their skills. And when they prove they can help make a boat go faster, they move up.

“Everybody gets to race,” Spencer said. “Everyone’s effort is rewarded. There is no bench sitting in rowing.”

Spencer, who has an impressive coaching resume, including a notable two years at Yale University, believes that kids gain confidence from reaching small individual goals during each day’s arduous workouts. And isn’t that what athletics should be all about — building confidence for life’s long haul?

“I owe my life to this sport,” said Austin Bentley, a senior at Kamiak High School. “It’s taken me to places I never thought I’d go.”

Such as the United States Naval Academy where he will report this summer. Rowing helped open the door for him and he’ll stroke for the Middies beginning this fall.

“My old coxswain is at the Naval Academy now,” Bentley said, “and he’s told me that nothing prepares you better for the academy as far as from a physical standpoint than rowing. It’s prepared me physically and mentally.”

With the amount of time the kids put into their training, Spencer likens rowing to a part-time job. Only the athletes don’t get paid. They pay to play.

More than 70 kids ranging in age from 12 to 18 commit their bodies and souls to what some argue is the hardest sport there is, taxing as it does every muscle in the body.

“I feel it every day,” Bentley said, referring to the aches and pains he incurs.

By the end of the week, he’s in deep hurt.

“Stairs are horrible,” added Jake Clark, who’s in the Running Start program at Everett Community College. “I have literally fallen down stairs.”

The two were having breakfast with a group of their ERA buddies at the Totem Family Dining restaurant after practice last Saturday. The weekly meal has become a tradition over the past two years.

“It makes Saturday practice worth going for,” said Philip Walczak, a junior at Archbishop Murphy.

Rowers don’t partake of polite little tea and toast breakfasts. They’re more inclined to lumberjack spreads. On this day, they devoured eggs and hashbrowns and sausage and French toast and pancakes and chocolate milk and … well, you get the idea. Just growing boys.

Last year, they occasionally attempted what is called the “barge.” You’ve seen coal heaped on a barge? This was food heaped on a plate. Biscuits, gravy, sausage, two eggs, hashbrowns, toast, chicken fried steak. “You don’t eat it separately,” Bentley said. “You eat it altogether.”

This isn’t gluttony. It’s what is required to fuel the bodies of hard-working athletes, all of whom are on the lean — and some even skinny — side. They burn up thousands of calories every day. Thus they have to replenish them.

Bentley recounted a recent meal he had at home. Large portions of spaghetti, topped off with seven enchiladas. “Then I passed out,” he said, cracking up his tablemates. “I fell asleep with garlic bread on my chest.”

A mere appetizer compared to a meal Clark recently enjoyed. At 6 feet, 5 inches, Clark has a lot of body to service, and on that occasion he filled it with two hotdogs, two chili dogs, a Slurpy, two teriyaki burgers, a bag of Grapevine, a three-foot Polish dog, three slices of pizza, two tacos and a soft drink. Not all at one setting, mind you, but strung out over five hours.

“Some days,” he said with an earnest expression, “I have massive food cravings.”

This was obviously one of those days.

Often, you find that rowers are not only fine athletes, but that they excel as students as well. Such was the case with the Everett varsity men’s 8 boat that finished second in the prestigious Head of the Charles regatta last October in Boston. The cumulative grade point average of the crew members is well over 3-point.

Alex Engel, a junior at Snohomish High School, scored a 2150 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (out of 2400) and carries a 3.95 GPA. Philip Walczak has a 3.8 GPA, as does Beau Skalley, a sophomore at Murphy and the youngest member of the varsity 8.

“Rowing takes a lot of time and commitment,” said Skalley, a real comer in the sport, “so it definitely helps you to learn and how to prioritize.”

He wants to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a doctor.

Murphy could almost start its own crew team — four of the eight in the varsity 8 attend the south Everett private school. The others are Martin Forde and Cole Borseth. Sam Helms of Snohomish High, Austin Overland of Kamiak and Bentley round out the rowers, with Charles Forrest — another Running Start student at EvCC — serving as the coxswain.

As they head into a new season, some of these kids will have competition for their seats in the varsity boat as the team eyes its primary goal, a trip to the National Championships in June. “This past winter (during the indoor training sessions) all the kids worked incredibly hard,” said varsity men’s coach Bill Clifford. “Something about rowing kind of instills great attitudes in people. They learn how to persevere and push (through pain).”

Because rowing isn’t one of the traditional sports such as football and basketball, it doesn’t get much media coverage, a fact not lost on the ERA kids but one that doesn’t seem to obsess them either. More important to them than the limelight is the camaraderie derived from the sport, an esprit de corps that is evident in the boathouse and in a restaurant over breakfast on a Saturday morning. And while their peers in the high school sports aim for state championships, the rowers shoot for national titles.

Or, as was the case last fall in Boston, even international acclaim. In 2009, the Everett varsity 8 finished third in its division at the Charles, which was won by Eton College of England. From that moment on, Everett fixed its energies on Eton, figuring if it could beat the Englishmen, it would win the varsity 8 title sought by 76 teams.

Well, it did beat Eton, which placed third, but a team from Marin County in the San Francisco Bay Area came out of nowhere to beat Everett’s time and win the title.

Now Everett has a new target — Marin — in the San Diego Crew Classic in April.

“Our teams are made up mostly of blue collar kids,” said ERA director Spencer. “Marin is in a whole different atmosphere (economically).”

But, as Clifford often reminds his rowers, Marin “is rowing just as hard as we are in workouts.”

That’s the beauty of the sport.

Hard work and commitment.