University of Oregon Rowing Team

The University of Oregon Rowing Team is located in Eugene, Oregon and practices at Dexter Reservoir nearby. The club was founded in 1967 and has operated continuously under the guidance of the University Club Sports Program. At Oregon, men's and women's teams practice together and compete against other club teams regionally and nationally in a number of regattas each year. At the end of May, the team races in the American Collegiate Rowing Association (ACRA) National Championship. Marlene Kindorf, Oregon's Head Coach, has been with the program since 2011.

The University of Oregon Boathouse is located next to the Oregon Association of Rowers (O.A.R.) at Dexter Reservoir. Each year, O.A.R. hosts the Covered Bridge Regatta which is the home regatta for both programs. In 2013, Dexter Lake was named one of the top racing venues in the United States by Row2k.

Before 1967, the University of Oregon made a modest attempt to field a crew team. The 1961 Oregana yearbook notes The Rowing Club at Fern Ridge Reservoir as, "one of the newest interest groups on campus," with plans to "row against similar organizations from other West Coast Schools." The original group boasted 20 members, three rowing shells, and a small tract of land to build a facility at Fern Ridge. However, it shut down in 1963.

Efforts to build a rowing program at Oregon reappeared in 1967 under the direction of university administrators Don McCarty and Ken Abbey and a founding crew of twenty-two oarsmen. Don McCarty was a director for the University Career Planning and Placement Services in the 1960s. When asked about his motivation for creating the team and building the original boathouse he said, "all the other Pacific-8 schools had crew programs at the time except for Washington State and us. I thought the Ducks should be on the water."

Ken Abbey, previously a rower for the University of Washington, helped to get the Oregon program off the ground before moving back to Washington in 1968. Abbey went to work at Washington State University where he used his experience at Oregon to get the WSU rowing program started in 1969.

Before building a boathouse for the team at Oregon, McCarty took a number of steps to procure boats in 1967. Oregon State Head Coach Karl Drlica offered early support to the program with a loan of two rowing shells, and McCarty rented a number of shells from his Stanford coach, Conn Findlay, at cost of $1500 per year. In addition to this, McCarty put a small ad in The Register-Guard on May 23, 1967, soliciting funds to build a training barge and buy a new eight-man shell, a goal that was never realized. The team was able to use the dock of the concessionaire at Dexter to launch their boats and a berth for the coaching launch was donated.

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