THE Handball, Rowing, Running & Swimming SOUTH ENDER Winter 2017 A Publication of the South End Rowing Club www. south-end.org IN THIS ISSUE President’s Message P2 Swimming P7 The Greatest Change P14 Club Expansion P4 Handball P11 Under the Sea P17 Running P6 Rowing P12 Board of Directors President Bill Wygant President’s Vice President Fran Hegeler Message Secretary Kim Pross By Bill Wygant Treasurer Susan Blew Past President Kim Howard Directors at Large Jim Bock A few weeks ago, Cy Lo, our new boathouse captain, Pat Cuneen asked me to write a letter to go into a time capsule that Alan Lapp will be placed in the wall at the club along with other club Niland Mortimer memorabilia. Below is the letter I sent him for the capsule. My hope is that it will give members of the future a snapshot Commissioners of what kind of club we were in 2016. Swimming Simon Dominguez Greetings from the South End Rowing Club Members of the Rowing Janie Bryant Past: Handball Rory Moore The South End Rowing Club in 2016 is an active club of 1,069 members, with 720 male members, 347 female Running Tara Sweet members, and two who were undecided. We are one of the oldest clubs dedicated to sport on the west coast of the Boat House Cy Lo United States. The clubhouse was once located at the “South Entertainment Jane Koegel End” of San Francisco, but was relocated to its present location at Aquatic Park in the 1930s and since that time has Building Ray Zahnd always included the sports of rowing, running, swimming, handball, and for a short time, boxing. We also host the Gym Paula Moran longest consecutively running St. Patrick’s Day party in the city, a recognition of the contributions members of Irish Membership Pat Cunneen, Bruce descent made to the early origins of the club. & Kathy Armbruster Newsletter Editor Dylan Tweney In 1976 six women—Lee Bender, Joan Brown, Trudy Dilorenzo, Mary Dake, Marilyn Rodeman, and Diane Office Manager Alex Lin Major—successfully brought suit to allow women to join the Webmaster Kelley Prebil The South Ender is the newsletter of the South End Rowing Club, published three times per year. We publish material by our members that reflects the ideals, purposes and accomplish- ments of the South End. We reserve the right to edit all submitted material. Articles, sug- gestions, inquiries and photos may be submit- ted electronically to: [email protected]. 900-word maximum for articles and minimum of 300 pixels per inch for photos. Please send articles as a Word file, not as a PDF. Thank you in advance for your contribution! 2 English Channel. To date the club has had 33 members swim the English Channel. Member Kristine Buckley was named the “Most Meritorious Swimmer” for her crossing in force 5 sea conditions in 2001. Twenty-seven members have swam the Catalina Channel, 12 members have crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, and 11 members completed the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim. No description of our club swimming program in our era would be complete without mentioning the contribution to bay swimming made by Robert (Bob) Roper who created the morning “Sunriser” program, a series of morning swims that introduced many club members to open water swimming in the bay; and for club and women have been an important part of his “Nutcracker” swim series, for more experienced our heritage ever since. swimmers, and which led many to completing solo swims of major marathon venues around the world. The club has a rich and colorful history in each of its sports. We were swimming across the For the last 21 years the club has hosted a swim from Golden Gate (1930) before there was a Golden Alcatraz for the public that attracts over 600 swimmers Gate Bridge; the club was very involved in each year, which contributed significantly to making early bay rowing events; National Handball our construction project possible. Championships were regularly held here; in running we have a proud tradition on the In 2008 club president Peter Ross asked our Boathouse Dipsea trail; and a number of our members Captain Dan McLaughlin what it would take to build have completed the Western States 100-mile a new women’s locker room. Eight years later we are run—member Marty Miracle completed it an quickly approaching completing the project at a cost of amazing total of five times. $2.5 million. We hope our efforts have been successful and the club has continued to grow and is still at its During 2016 we note the following member present location at Aquatic Park, where it remains accomplishments: a source of athletic inspiration to the people of San · Diane Davis won her division and set a Francisco. course record in the Head of the Charles row in Boston, one of the largest rowing competitions in the U.S. · Five swimmers soloed the Catalina Channel; Melissa Berkay used only the butterfly stroke for her crossing. · Three swimmers completed solo swims of the length of Tahoe from south to north under the piloting of club member Tom Linthicum. · Three members—Cameron Bellamy, Andrew McLaughlin, and Steve Walker—solo swam the Irish Sea. In our era only 31 people have successfully made a solo crossing of that body of water. Previously, Kim Chambers, a member of both clubs, also completed that swim. · One member, Asha Allen, swam the 3 The South End’s first clubhouse was originally built in the 1870s and located in the historic South End, then moved several times until it reached its current location on the east end of Aquatic Park. That structure still ex- ists as the upper boathouse and men’s locker room, and some of its exterior walls and windows are still visible from inside. “I’m sure you’ve noticed, but the existing structure has these gaps and places where one room doesn’t quite align with the next. We liked this informal relationship between the various additions made over time, and Biggest Expansion to the Club Set to Open wanted to preserve that character,” said Yuki Bowman, in March a project manager at OPA. The result is a structure that By Dylan Tweney is visually distinct yet consistent with the spirit of the overall building. After eight years of planning and almost a year of demolition and construction work, a substantial new The design also represents a fair amount of negotia- addition to the South End Rowing Club’s building is tion and back and forth with the city’s historical review set to open in March of this year. board, fire safety inspectors, and other agencies. For example, because it’s directly adjacent to a wooden The addition gives the club a new women’s locker pier, the city required the east wall to have a 60-minute room, a new lower boathouse, and a new gym. It’s the fire resistance rating, including sprinklers on the out- first major construction at the club in over a decade and side of the wall and flameproof “transparent wall” units is easily the largest single addition ever made to the in place of normal windows. facility. The contractor for the project was Bellcore Construc- It all dates back to 2008, when then-president Peter tion. Demolition of the old boathouse started in May Ross asked boathouse captain Dan McLaughlin his 2016, and South Enders have been swimming, rowing, thoughts on expanding the women’s locker room, running, playing handball, working out, and cooking which had been occupying a corner of the boathouse alongside a construction site since then. There were a since women were first admitted to the club in 1976. few hiccups along the way: Excavation uncovered an old, defunct water pipe that wasn’t listed in any sur- “I said the only rational thing to do is to go up, because veys, and then the diggers ran into an old cobblestone if you simply increased it you would take more room out of the lower boathouse,” McLaughlin said. Eventu- ally, McLaughlin was named project manager oversee- ing the addition, along with project committee mem- bers Kim Pross, Dave Plant, and Ray Zahnd. Designed by San Francisco-based Ogrydziak Prillinger Architects (OPA), the new addition is a freestanding structure with steel framing. Because it’s a separate building, it’s seismically independent from the rest of the club, which minimized disturbance to the existing structure. That gave the architects room to put a long staircase in between the existing and new buildings, leading from the beach up to a second-floor landing that leads into the new women’s locker room on the left and the hallway that connects the day room to the men’s lockers on the right. The design honors and reflects the building’s history. 4 Kevin Tobiason, staltwart construction manager sea wall. Construction stopped while engineers exam- new addition sits on top of 18-inch stem walls. If ined the wall, and eventually decided it was stronger needed, that means the floor of the boathouse could be and more stable than any concrete footing could be. raised, putting it high enough to handle up to a meter The east wall of the addition is now anchored on that of sea level rise. wall. The goal is to have the addition open and fully func- The marquee feature will be the view from the new tional in time for this year’s St. Patrick’s Day party on gym, which has a large window and deck looking out March 17.