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Siefert isn’t merely comparing the liberal social mores of that Dutch canal town to the rigid attitudes toward sexuality still rampant in our country, even here in open-minded Austin. As part of Row Team Austin (RTA) — a squad of 50-plus rowers, mostly gay and lesbian — Siefert traveled to Amsterdam last year in August to compete in Gay Games V and had the time of his life.
Ask any of the rowers what their trip to the Gay Games — and more specifically, what RTA means to them, and you’ll hear the same refrain: It’s one of the best things they’ve ever done; they can’t even remember life before rowing; it’s the only time and place in their lives that they’ve felt completely free to be themselves.
“Meeting people like us from around the world vastly expanded my sense of what it means to be gay,” Siefert relates, explaining the larger concept behind the team. “RTA has a mission to set an example of how gay, lesbian, and transgendered people cntegrate into the mainstream, and be ourselves at the same time.”
Sandy Bartlett, the oldest member of the Gay Games squad, echoes this sentiment. “This is the way the world is supposed to be, each person accepted and celebrated as a valid member of the human family.”
Not all that long ago, Row Team Austin was little more than an idea lovingly wrapped in the folds of one particularly well-known handmade quilt. In October 1996, while volunteering at the AIDS Memorial Quilt display on the Mall in Washington to honor a friend who had succumbed to HIV, Steve Onken resolved to organize a boat to compete in the 1998 Gay Games in Amsterdam. The team would be one more way to pay tribute to his longtime friend who died in the summer of 1995.
Already an experienced rower, Onken knew he had enough people back in Austin to field a quad, or four-person rowing crew. At the quilt memorial he met Bill Weaver, coincidentally also a rowing enthusiast from Austin, who expressed interest in going to Amsterdam. The team grew by leaps and bounds as friends told friends and word spread through the gay community. Onken — aka “den mother” to his RTA colleagues — used his persuasive personality to recruit the more experienced folks to teach classes to newcomers. That’s how Dan Lyons got involved.
Lyons learned about RTA from a bartender at Oilcan Harry’s after mentioning how difficult id been to get into a novice class at the Austin Rowing Club. He took a class through RTA, with no intention of competing in Amsterdam. In fact, he laughed at the thought of practicing several times a week. These days you can’t get him off the water. He doesn’t even seem to mind the ungodly pre-dawn practice times. “I feel very virtuous after a morning row,” he grins. It seems that Row Team Austin, with its initial goal of competing in Amsterdam, has turned many an erstwhile couch potato into a cutthroat competitor. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the team has a few world-class coaches to lead the way.
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RTA owes at least part of its success in Amsterdam to Austin rowing coaches Matt Diefenbach and Mary Regan. The beginning of this year saw the addition of new coach Kerry Knight (see Austin Rowing Club feature) to the equation, with Diefenbach relocating to Philadelphia to pursue other interests.
Once at the games, while other athletes in Amsterdam were goofing off in their spare time, RTA crews were working with Regan to rig their borrowed (and often decrepit) boats and doing practice runs at the Bosbaan, the six-lane, 2,000-meter rowing course where they would compete. “Matt had decreed up front that if we were going to work hard enough to go to Amsterdam, once there we would focus exclusively on rowing until rowing was over,” remembers Bartlett. Obviously, all that dedication and hard work paid off in spades. RTA crews came home with a total of six medals: four gold and two silver.
Austin’s crew did, however, find time to enjoy Holland’s liberal Mecca. Most team members agree that the opening ceremony — with its pageantry and screaming spectators — was quite possibly the highlight of the week. One rower described walking into the stadium as “truly electrifying,” making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. “Awesome,” beams Bartlett. “The music was fabulous, colors and uniforms were dazzling, and the spectacle — well, who does extravaganza better than gay folk?” Coxswain Sharon Smith — one of the few straight members on the squad — recalls the “huge pink and yellow Gay Games banners all over the city,” and especially enjoyed the male cheerleaders in drag “with really big hair.” Smith also remarked on some extravaganzas in the opening ceremonies which featured same-sex dancing and kissing. To her it was no big deal. “Then I remembered that people had come to the Gay Games from countries around the world where some of those activities would be unthinkable or a crime, and how liberating it must be for those people just to see [that] in the company of 50,000,” said Smith.
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To honor Shepard and other victims of bigotry-related assaults and murders in recent years, Row Team Austin decided to take action at two prominent regattas last fall. In acknowledgment of all hate crimes (not just those targeting gay people), some members of RTA wore black armbands during competition. Each band was emblazoned with the name of a hate-crime victim. The armbands were introduced on October 31 at the Head of the Colorado, a day-long competition on Town Lake which drew crews from Texas and Louisiana. They were displayed again the next week when RTA boats traveled to Atlanta to compete in the Head of the Chattahoochee, a regatta which typically attracts over 2,000 rowers, many on collegiate teams. Onken says this action was particularly significant because it marked the move from being “out and proud” rowers in mostly gay-affiliated events to “out and proud” at national rowing events. This, of course, was not without an element of risk. “Our intent was not to invite or provoke [reaction],” he says. “Rather, our intent was to provoke thought and reflection that Matthew Shepard could have been any one of us.” Onken sadly adds, “The men’s eight and quad could compete in sepe events, wearing completely different names on their armbands, and not run out of murdered Texas gay men.” Reaction to the armbands was largely positive, inviting interested queries from curious onlookers.
Although Row Team Austin was formed with the singular goal of competing in Amsterdam, RTA plans on keeping their oars in the water. Eighteen rowers recently completed a novice class, and RTA will be assisting the Austin Rowing Club with more classes beginning in April. Last weekend, March 20-21, they participated in the Heart of Texas Regatta on Town Lake, and this coming weekend some of them are heading to California to compete in the prestigious San Diego Crew Classic. Further regattas are scheduled for later this year.
“The experience of gay people being totally ‘out’,” says coxswain Smith, “has been an enlightening experience for [non-RTA] members of the Austin Rowing Club. I hope that the frequent playful innuendo and comfort level that’s taken for granted at RTA practice continues wherever we row, and that RTA’s gay members don’t let that fade. RTA could become a model gay-identified squad in the U.S.” It’s certain that Row Team’s boisterous mix of gays, lesbians, and straight allies is committed to staying the course. It’s a long river ahead, but with Amsterdam under their sculls, they already have so much for which to be proud, or as Rob Ignatowski, a soft-spoken engineer who won gold and silver medals at the Gay Games says, “The journey was incredible, not just the destination.”
To learn more about Row Team Austin, call 708-9303 or check out their Web site at http://www.rowteamaustin.org
For more information on rowing classes, call the Austin Rowing Club at 472-0700 or 472-0726.
The Federation of Gay Games Web site is at http://www.gaygames.org
This article appears in March 26 • 1999 and March 26 • 1999 (Cover).