Row, row, row your boat!

Having used all her softball eligibility, former Conneaut great Adrian Tuttle turns to rowing

BOB ETTINGER

Adrian Tuttle’s rowing career at Nova Southeastern University has come a long way since the day she and another teammate new to the sport flipped their boat.

“When me and one of teammates, a girl came over from softball with me, were new, our coach had us in the pairs boat so he could teach us the oar and hand levels and the different aspects of rowing,” Tuttle said. “Salt water is not the cleanest. As we were getting in the boat, she didn’t grab her oar handle and I started to push away from the dock.

“We started tipping. She knows I don’t care for water. The more we try not to tip, the more we tip. She’s back there laughing. She doesn’t care, she knows we’re going to tip anyway. We flipped. I was nervous. My feet were velcroed in the boat so I started to panic. She was still laughing at me as she same up to the boat and gets ahold of me. She tells me to reach down and unvelcro my feet.

“My sock even came off and was floating in the water,” Tuttle said. “I’m in the water with my visor on and everything. We’re trying to flip the boat back over so we can try and climb back in. We had to swim back to shore with one arm while we pulled the boat with the other.”

In barely a year, Tuttle will have gone from swimming back to shore to rowing in the NCAA Division II National Championships when she and her Nova Southeastern teammates take to the water in Sacramento, Calif., starting today. Tuttle, the 2002 and 2003 Star Beacon Ashtabula County Softball Player of the Year, was part of a four-person boat to win the Sunshine State Conference championship to qualify for the national championships.

“I didn’t really expect (to get to nationals),” Tuttle said. “I know college sports are hard work. I didn’t realize the amount of work (rowing) entailed. I knew the program was good and the coach had taken them to nationals the year before. I knew he was a good teacher and would help me become a good rower, but I didn’t expect all the good things that came with it.”

The daughter of Jim and Elaine Tuttle, who had joined the rowing team after exhausting her four years of eligibility for softball after last season, was using the rowing team and her fifth year of NCAA eligibility to help finish her schooling.

“In the beginning, it was difficult,” Tuttle said. “(Rowing) is a lot of hard work. As the days went on, it got easier. It was definitely a big change (from softball). It’s a lot different mindset. The challenge has been a good experience. I’ve put a lot of work into working out to get in rowing shape.”

Which means early mornings and lots of time both at the gym and on the lakes and rivers.

“I wake up at 4:30 and drive 20 minutes for the water work out, which goes until seven,” Tuttle said. “I come home and take a nap and we have another morning workout at the gym on the erg machine. Our coach gives us different numbers and that’s how hard we have to pull.

“We have to keep (the machine) at those numbers for a certain amount of time. During the workout, you just stare at the screen and watch the number the whole time. It’s hard. It plays with your head. The more tired you get, the more you watch that number because you don’t want it to go up or down. It’s a challenge, a different mindset. You watch that number and pull your guts out.”

A big part of rowing is staying in sync with you teammates in the boat. If one person is slightly off, they slow the boat down considerably.

“When I first started learning, I had to learn how to get in the boat and row even with everybody else,” Tuttle said. “The slightest little movement can offset the boat and it’s harder to get the oar out of the water, which slows the boat down.”

After a successful race, celebrating isn’t exactly the first thing that enters a rowers mind.

“It’s very difficult (to celebrate a win in the boat),” Tuttle said. “To tell you the truth, you’re almost too tired to celebrate. You’ve just done this sprint, you can barely breath. You have to hurry up and turn the boat around and take it to the docks. You have to lift it and carry it back to the trailer and put it up. You’re so tired, it takes a while for that happiness and excitement to settle in. You’re just happy to make it back to the docks.”

Making that transition from the pitching circle to the rower’s seat was difficult at times for reasons Tuttle’s coaches didn’t even see, at least at first.

“In the middle of the year, I was on the port (right) side of the boat,” Tuttle said. “That means I was pulling more with my left arm. It’s obviously not my stronger arm (Tuttle is a right-handed hurler), So I was leaning the wrong way — the opposite way my teammates were leaning — because I was trying to compensate.

“The coach got in front of the boat one day at practice and was watching my head pop out to the side. He switched my seat so I was now on the other side of the boat.

“I’ve been there ever since.”

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