Oakland Strokes
| Oakland Strokes Rowing Club | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Location | Oakland, California, USA |
| Home water | Oakland Estuary |
| Former names | Ed Lickiss |
| Affiliations | Southwest Junior Rowing Association |
| Events | |
| Southwest Junior Regional Championships and USRowing Youth Nationals | |
The Oakland Strokes Rowing Club is a junior rowing club in Oakland, California.
The Oakland Strokes was founded in 1974 by Ed Lickiss. A former oarsman at the University of California, Berkeley, Ed won the Pacific Coast Sculling Championship three years in a row and was chosen to represent the United States at the 1940 Olympic Games. Due the outbreak of World War II, the games were cancelled and Ed joined the Army Air Corps as a P-38 pilot instead.
After the war Ed returned to Oakland and became a local electrical contractor. He founded the Lake Merritt Rowing Club in 1960, and established a program of crew for high school students. Historically, rowing had been a men's sport. Believing that women would also enjoy crew, Ed began training young women and, with Joanna Iverson and Ted Nash, founded the National Women's Rowing Association in 1964. Today the USRA honors him with the annual Edwin E. Lickiss Trophy for the Lightweight Women's Four Championship.
Ed envisioned crew as a sport that could provide young athletes with both excellent physical training and the confidence to succeed in life's most challenging endeavors. To provide a framework for that vision, he incorporated the Strokes as a California nonprofit corporation and it became chartered as Explorer Post 8 and 9 of the Boy Scouts of America, Piedmont Council.
On Ed's death in 1985, a group of his family and friends joined together to keep alive his dedication to rowing. Today, the Oakland Strokes is operated by a board of directors that include former coaches and rowers and the parents of former rowers and current rowers. The board sets the policies and carries out the responsibilities of the rowing program.
Coaches are Brian de Regt, Alison Dobb Ray, Dave Adams, Alan Kush, Taryn O'Connell, Erin Mullin, Frank Clayton, Andrew Blair, Teresa Oja (on maternity leave) and Bertram Harney.
The Program Director is UCLA alum Beth Anderson, also the coach of the Women's Novice team.
In 2005 and 2006, the Strokes Varsity Women won the Peabody Championship Cup at the Henley Women's Regatta in England, the most prestigious award.
The varsity men's squad in the 2009-2010 season qualified two boats for the nationals, thanks to the help of two new coaches to assist Ivan Smiljanic, Rich Wendling and Dameon Engblom. Smiljanic retired as a coach after the season ended, leaving the head coaching job to Engblom. In 2010-11, Engblom led the heavyweight 8 to 3rd at Southwest, just 0.2 seconds behind Los Gatos. However, that eight was not brought to nationals; Engblom chose to bring the varsity four and pair, who went on to get gold and silver, respectively.
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