A break amid an intense couple of hours on the Rivanna Reservoir revealed blood. Phillip Chadwell, sitting in the “stroke” seat – the position at the stern, or back, of the boat, closest to the coxswain – of the University of Virginia’s eight-person racing shell, had time to take his hands off his oars, rub his nose and discover the damage.
When a towel was offered to help with the nosebleed, though, he refused.
“I’m good,” Chadwell shouted to his coach, Frank Biller, in a nearby motorboat. “Let’s go, we got work to do!”
And the shell carried on, Chadwell and seven fellow Wahoos moving together with the kind of blistering pace that reminds you they recently won a national championship.
A nosebleed doesn’t stop Phillip Chadwell, in the navy top closest to the coxswain, from competing with his boatmates on UVA’s top racing shell, which includes Noah Amato, in white top, and Alex Ballinger. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)
“That is literally sucking it up and keep going,” Biller said. “You suck it up (snorts) and keep going.”
Biller is in his 16th year as head coach and director of the UVA men’s club rowing team. He’s overseen the development of multiple national champion crews in his role, including a pair of eight-man boats that won titles at the final American Collegiate Rowing Association regatta in May in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
A dozen of those 16 Cavaliers are now on a European tour, culminating with competition on the River Thames at the Henley Royal Regatta, the oldest and most prestigious regatta in the world. The England-based event begins Tuesday and ends July 6.
The UVA club rowers aren’t on athletic scholarships and none have a name, image and likeness deal. It’s all sweat – with a little blood – for the love of a sport that many never tried until they set foot on Grounds.
Hard things together
Alex Ballinger’s road from novice rower to second-team All-American began with a simple pitch at the 2021 Fall Activities Fair on the Lower Lawn. The 6-foot-3 Leesburg native apparently stood out from his fellow first-year students when hovering near the club rowing station.
“Oh, you’re tall,” Ballinger remembered a team representative telling him. “You should come row.”
Because of its club status, the men’s rowing program lacks the recruiting luxuries of an NCAA varsity sport. For starters, Biller and his staff aren’t routinely traveling the country to scout high school talent with their own eyes. Roster building, instead, can sometimes stem from something as simple as evaluating UVA students as they walk on Grounds.
It’s a “judgmental process,” Biller said.
“You’re kind of looking for size and leverage to start with. Anything between 5-10 and up is a good start,” he said. “But we’ve also had undersized guys who went on to make the national team as a lightweight rower. You just have to work a little harder when you’re smaller.”
Coach Frank Biller shouts instructions to the Cavaliers from his motorboat on the Rivanna Reservoir. Biller is in his 16th season with UVA. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)
But it’s not like those with ideal measurements have it easy. Ballinger, like five others in UVA’s top eight-man, national title-winning boat, had never rowed before coming to UVA. In high school, he swam and played lacrosse and football.
Ballinger’s boatmate, 5-10 Noah Amato, was a gymnast.
“I was watching the Summer Olympics the year before I came in,” Amato said, “and I was like, ‘(Rowing) looks like the perfect combination of power, endurance and team. It’s what I’m looking for.’
“And then I tried out, and it was so painful. But for some reason, I was like, ‘Man, I liked pushing myself that hard, so, yeah, I’m going to keep doing this.’”
During the academic year, the 65-member team hits the water weekdays at 6 a.m., with an additional Saturday practice beginning later in the day. To help pay their club dues, rowers can earn money through the club’s “Rent-A-Rower” program, taking on manual labor duties throughout the Charlottesville community.
The demands are fierce, the glory is limited, but there’s a standard of commitment that’s remained a program staple.
Ballinger, working from the bow seat, farthest from the coxswain, is a national champion rower at UVA after arriving on Grounds with no previous experience in the sport. “I came to tryouts, and I guess I did well enough to make the team,” he said. “And then I just sort of never left. It was something fun to do. It was a great group of guys. And then, over time, I grew to love the sport.” (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)
“If they make it through those first months as new guys, as first-years, they typically stay around,” Biller said. “I’d say about more than 90% stick around all the way to the fourth year.”
Amato, a first-team All-American, graduated in May with a degree in music, while Ballinger received degrees in economics and government and Chadwell, their boatmate, received his in engineering. Thirty UVA club rowers received Academic All-America honors this spring.
“I just think how we view the sport would be fundamentally different (if we were on scholarship),” Ballinger said. “I think there’s something nice about knowing everybody here is a normal student, and we’re all capable of succeeding at UVA. The fact that we do this really hard thing here together, it just builds camaraderie.”
Keep going
Between shouting instructions and offering medical assistance, Biller told stories to a UVA Today reporter riding shotgun on his motorboat during an early June practice.
