The 2016 USRowing Club Nationals were held on Bethel's Harsha Lake last weekend, the second consecutive year the lake hosted the event.

The 2016 USRowing Club Nationals were held on Bethel's Harsha Lake last weekend, the second consecutive year the lake hosted the event.

By Garth Shanklin
Sports Editor

A bright, sunny Sunday morning helped cap off the 2016 US Club Rowing Championships, held last week at Harsha Lake in Bethel.

Nearly 1,900 rowers representing 102 teams from 30 states, as well as Canada and India, competed in the event, which began on July 13.

Of those entries, 24 came from the Cincinnati Junior Rowing Club, who won 17 events at the 2016 Midwest Junior Rowing Championships, held in Bethel earlier this year.

The Cincinnati Junior Rowing Club sent representatives to the finals of 10 events. On July 15, they placed fifth in the Women’s U19 8+ final, finishing roughly nine seconds behind the race winner. They would win the Men’s Intermediate Lightweight 4+ event, posting a time of 6:38.682.

In addition to those two events, the Cincinnati Juniors would place fourth in the men’s Elite/Senior 4+ final and third in the women’s U17 final.

On the final day of competition, the Juniors competed in five events, finishing third in the Men’s Elite/Senior Lightweight 8+ final.

In the overall standings, the Cincinnati Juniors finished ninth with 70 total points. Vesper Boat Club, from Washington, D.C., won the overall trophy, compiling 267 total points. The Juniors were 15th in the women’s standings and seventh in the men’s.

This year’s event marked the second year in a row the championships were held in Bethel. Mark Calitri, president of the Clermont County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, said the county was looking for ways to draw more people to the region, and identified Harsha Lake as something that could do just that.

“We did an assessment on what the best opportunities we could find for the region,” Calitri said. “We identified our lake, which actually held Olympic trials in the past. The lake seemed like the best opportunity, most underused asset that we had.”

Before last year’s event could be held, however, structures at the lake had to be updated. Calitri said the lake had a few things already that made it a good host for rowing events, but a few more additions were needed.

“A lot of people don’t realize the 1984 Olympic starting blocks from the Los Angeles games are in Clermont County,” Calitri said. “We have some assets that are specific to a successful rowing event, we just had to add some things.”

A new beach house opened in June of last year and currently houses showers, restrooms and the concessions. State watercraft funds allowed the construction of new docks for rowing, and sight lines for visitors were improved.

That all led to a successful 2015 event for an area that’s no stranger to hosting major races. The lake hosted the USRowing Youth Championships for 15 years from 1995 to 2000 and the National Collegiate Rowing Championships for 13 years, from 1983 to 1996. Other races, including the Cincinnati Regatta, the Cincinnati High School Invitational and the Head of the Hidden Dragon have also been held at the venue.

In terms of the 2016 regatta, the largest in USRowing Club Nationals history, preparation began shortly after the 2015 regatta drew to a close, according to Calitri.

“We started a week after last year’s event,” Calitri said. “We all sat down with everyone on the team and made a list of what we wanted to improve.”

One difference between this year’s event and the 2015 regatta was the amount of volunteers. Over 400 volunteers from organizations like the Cincinnati Junior Rowing Club, the Clermont Crew, Young Life and Glen Este athletics volunteered at the event. Boy Scout Troop 476 handled the trash, while Clermont County Board of Developmental Disabilities managed the shuttle service that took spectators to and from different parking lots in the park. Civil Air Patrol Squadron OH-279 managed parking for the event. Combined, those organizations pledged nearly 3,000 hours of volunteer work over the five-day period.

Sponsors also played a key role in the regatta. Roughly 15 businesses across the county, including Chick-fil-A Eastgate, Jersey Mike’s in Eastgate, Holman Motors, Penn Station and Paradise Pavilion at Jungle Jim’s, all pitched in as well as regional business such as Mercy Health, Lykins Energy and Cincinnati Bell.

“We kept ‘ideas on the fly’ every time someone said something no matter how major or small we wrote it down,” Calitri said. “This next week we’ll start to compile the whole list and feedback. We’ll sit down with security and park teams, and we’ll have a conference call with US Rowing.”

This year’s event had a $2.4 million impact on Clermont County and the region. While the location for next year’s race has not yet been determined, Calitri said feedback from this year’s event will be evaluated and could potentially lead to changes, should the area host the championship races again in 2017.

“We kept ‘ideas on the fly’ every time someone said something no matter how major or small we wrote it down,” Calitri said. “This next week we’ll start to compile the whole list and feedback. We’ll sit down with security and park teams, and we’ll have a conference call with US Rowing.”