Rowing can be addictive: Just ask this Eugene rower who’s been at it for half a century

Five days a week, 75-year-old Eugenean Sally Keller rows on Dexter Lake. She glides in a shell less than half her weight with other members of the Oregon Association of Rowers masters team.

This weekend (Oct. 16-18), she’ll race on the big stage. Keller is headed to Boston for the Head of the Charles Regatta, a three-mile race on the Charles River. The event draws rowers from around the world.

Her crew, whose average age is older than 70, calls itself the “old ladies eight.” 

Keller’s been rowing for more than five decades, since the early 1970s, and doesn’t plan to stop anytime soon.

“I tease people that come to learn rowing at Dexter,” Keller said with a chuckle. “I go, ‘Watch out! Rowing can be addicting.’”

A phone call and a donation

Keller, who grew up outside of Rochester, New York, had never heard of rowing as a sport until her first year at Wellesley College, a women’s college 13 miles outside of Boston.

There, she took a recreational rowing class. Dorms would have short, 300-meter races against one another.

Soon after, she got a call from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology women’s rowing team, looking for another team to race on the Charles.

“I think I could probably find four people,” she told them, and a Wellesley College women’s rowing team was created. 

A friend of one of the rowers donated a rowing shell, which they named the “Spirit of ’73,” after their graduating class. A newer Wellesley boat carries the name today, which Keller calls her “claim to fame at that school.”

She’s kept rowing ever since, from pregnancy through the pandemic. 

“As you get older, you’ve got to row better because you’re not as strong,” she said.

Weekly training

Keller rows locally with the OAR team at 7 a.m. three days a week. She also rows either in her single or in a double on two other days.

Some mornings she’s on a rowing machine at 6 a.m., doing a Zoom workout with a nationwide group of mostly women. Two coaches, one in Iowa City and one in Tennessee, send the workouts. Her equipment consists of a laptop and an erg, an indoor rowing machine.

She says the erg is where she’s weakest.

“I’m not big and strong on the erg,” she said. “I can move the boat, and I can balance the boat.”

She skips some of the workouts when her shoulder aches. 

“Always something’s hurt,” Keller said. “Not necessarily injured, but … the recovery is not very good.”

Warming up takes longer now that she’s in her 70s than it used to. “It just takes me longer to wake my body up,” she said. She paddles for a while before official workouts start.

Doubles

At Dexter, Keller typically rows with her doubles partner and good friend, Kathy Juhlin.

Juhlin, 76, is also a seasoned rower with decades of experience.

The two row a yellow-and-green wooden boat named Ulu, which is an Inuit word for a knife. Juhlin sits in the stroke seat, setting the rhythm. Keller sits behind her in the bow (they row backward), steering. They’ve rowed together since 2012.

“I have complete confidence in us,” Juhlin said. “That’s probably the most relaxed I ever feel in a boat is when I’m rowing the double with her.”

Juhlin credits Keller with sharpening her technique, from keeping the blades off the water to pacing the stroke. Off the water, Juhlin said Keller builds the club’s regatta lineups and makes sure everyone who wants a seat gets one. Juhlin calls her “a real generous rower.”

Rowing into the future

Juhlin said she’d be happy to row recreationally forever.

Keller has different plans.

“I thought, if I’m going to be rowing, I might as well be racing because I love it,” she said.

Racing, Keller said, makes her feel “so alive.” She still gets nervous at the start.

“As soon as they say, ‘Go,’ you’re focused on the race, and the nervousness goes away.”

Rowing is also her calm place.

“My family is very supportive because they know mentally I need to be rowing,” she said.

When asked about her future, Keller said she has a goal. She points to a 90-year-old woman in her online erg class as an inspiration. The woman still rows every morning at 6 a.m. — and bounced back from a broken leg.

Keller looks to take that mentality to the Head of the Charles, where she and her crewmates will take it one stroke at a time. Weather, other boats and luck all decide the outcome. Keller says only the preparation is in her hands.

“Right now I’m still loving rowing,” she said, “and I’m not ready to quit.”

Do you know Lane County athletes age 65 or older who take their sports seriously? Send an email to Leo Heffron.