BELLINGHAM, Wash. --- With nine National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division II national championships to its credit, Western Washington University women's rowing has won over twice as many titles as all the school's athletic teams combined. That total is 13, with no other sport having more than two.

The Viking rowers captured the first of a record seven straight NCAA crowns in 2005 and added others in 2017 and 2024. All of those featured top performances by open eight and open four shells.

But nearly lost in Western women's rowing history is an event that happened 21 years prior to its first NCAA title.

In 1984, a Western lightweight eight shell took top honors at the Women's National Collegiate Rowing Championships (WNCRC), winning by .006 of a second in a photo finish over San Diego State in a race that covered 1,000 meters on Seattle's Green Lake.

Making the achievement more improbable was that it happened just two years after rowing for women received varsity status at Western in 1982.

And the surprising victory avenged Western's only loss of the season by one-tenth of a second to that same San Diego State boat two weeks before at the Pacific Coast Championships on Lake Natoma near Sacramento, Calif.

The Vikings were unbeaten during the 1984 regular season, winning at the Daffodil Classic on American Lake near Tacoma, the WWU Invitational held on Lake Samish and a dual meet at Washington State. They then were victorious at the Cascade Sprints, the northwest small college championships, crushing runner-up Pacific Lutheran by nearly 18 seconds.

The Western lineup did not change throughout the campaign. It included coxswain Helen Robinson (Jr., Seattle/Highline), stroke Jackie Barrett (Sr., Olympia/Capital), No.7 Kim Refvem (So., Issaquah), No.6 Kristi Moen (Jr., Seattle/Highline), No.5 Cathy White (Jr., Issaquah), No.4 Karen Stewart (So., Kent/Kent-Meridian), No.3 Debbie Callan (Fr., Seattle/Kennedy), No.2 Betsy Bower (So., Kirkland/Lake Washington) and bow Jennifer Demitruk (So., Anchorage, AK/Bartlett).

Moen and White were the only returning letter winners, with Demitruk, Refvem and Stewart moving up from a novice eight boat. Barrett had returned following a one-year absence and Bower and Callan were both in their first year of competition.

"I don't believe anyone expected that we would do so well," said Moen, "It was both surreal and magical."

All Western's races prior to nationals covered 2,000 meters. But that final run, though half as long as the one in Sacramento, was even more intense between Western and San Diego State as they crossed the finish line in a virtual tie. There was no celebration as the participants in both boats collapsed in exhaustion while awaiting the results, neither having any idea as to the victor.

"The race was pretty much even most of the way through," Bower said. "I just know that we did a lot of power 10s."

A photo-finish camera was required to determine the winner. After what seemed like an eternity, but was just minutes, Western was declared the champion in the time of 4:03.54 to the Tritons' 4:03.60. Oregon was third at 4:11.32. When the decision was announced, the decibel level along the shore rose to its highest level of the day.

"We just sat there at the finish line, which was hard to know where it was, not knowing if we had it or not," said Barrett in a Seattle Times' interview. "While awaiting the news, we all held hands. Then everything broke loose."

Had nationals not taken place in Seattle that year, Western probably would not have been able to participate, not having the finances needed to make what probably would have been a long road trip.
 
First World Championships for lightweights

In the summer of 1984, for the first time, world championships were held for women's lightweight events on Aug. 23-26 at the Olympic Basin in Montreal, Canada. They were conducted to help the FISA (the World Rowing Federation) decide whether those events should be included in future world and Olympic championships.

To make for a more viable test, countries were allowed to enter more than one crew. Besides its national entry, the United States also put together four regional entries.

One of those came from the northwest and was named the Emerald City Lights. Prompted by Western assistant coach Ed Maxwell, three Western rowers, Betsy Bower, Kristi Moen, and Karen Stewart, tried out and were selected. Stewart was picked as stroke, Bower No.4 and Moen No.2 with Maxwell being one of the team's two coaches.

"It was a lot of fun going against teams from around the world,' recalled Stewart, "Our parents came with us. We rowed in Montreal after practicing at Syracuse, New York."

Brand-new boat, but …

During the 1984 season, the Western lightweights got to row in a brand-new fiberglass Pocock designed shell. It was the first fiberglass boat purchased by the school.

"We rowed in a new boat, but it was built for eight male rowers with an average weight of at least 180 pounds, and we averaged 125 pounds," recalled Bower. "As a result, the boat floated 'too high.' Normal attempts at compensating for this would have been to change the oarlock heights, but we were not allowed to change them, the boat being rigged for the men's open rowers."

"So the shell was less stable than a properly weighted boat, our oar placement required a less than optimal posture and balance was more difficult to attain. Our shell was definitely heavier than shells designed for women lightweight rowers.

"There's some sort of way to estimate how factors like these affect a team's time over a race. Added time would be a matter of seconds, but given that our loss to, then win over San Diego State was less than one second for both races, that was a big deal."

That became more apparent to Bower at the World Championships.

"I didn't really know how different our shell was until we rowed back east that summer and saw how much smaller the boat was from the one we used."

Two first-year coaches directed 1984 rowers

The 1984 Western women's rowers were directed by two first-year coaches, Brien Squires and Ed Maxwell.

Squires was named the program's head coach in late January. He had been a top men's lightweight rower for the Vikings in the 1970s.

A volunteer assistant, who worked exclusively with the lightweights, was Ed Maxwell. He had just returned to the northwest after graduating from MIT in 1982 where he lettered four years in rowing.

Both coaches have passed away.

Squires, who served as Western's coach for just two years, died on January 2, 1995, at the age of 49 after suffering a heart attack while snow shoeing on Mount Baker.

Maxwell, who only coached the Vikings in 1984, died in 2022 at 63 following his retirement from Boeing in 2017. He had become a legend while coaching the Seattle Parks Department's Green Lake Crew junior rowing program for 33 years.

Maintaining Weight

In order to make weight for competition, the boat average had to be 125 pounds. Bower, who was the Vikings' tallest rower at 5-foot-7, said there was rarely a concern to achieve that.

"I was definitely the tallest person in the boat and weighed around 125, and I can only remember a couple of times where I would stop drinking water on a Friday afternoon and not eat until after weigh-in the next morning," she said.  

"Obviously, we needed to 'manage' our weight, but I don't remember any big deal made about any person in particular needing to lose weight … Our coxswain was so light, she sometimes had to carry extra weight."

Bower, a chemistry major, went on to be a Consumer Safety Officer with the United States Food and Drug Administration. Had there been a strict rule about missing practice because of classes, she probably would have rowed just one year at Western.

Women's rowing national history

The WNCRC began in 1980 and continued as the collegiate championships until 1996. In 1997 the Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) began playing host to the lightweight national events.

Prior to the WNCRC, there were the USRowing National Championships from 1967 to 1980, which included club and collegiate entries.

Stewart family
 
Karen Stewart's sister Gail was stroke of the Washington open eight that won a fourth straight national title for the Huskies at the 1984 WNCRA. In all, Stewart had four sisters with two attending Washington, one Washington State and one Seattle U.  

After graduation from Western, Karen Stewart served the next 14 years as a teacher for a fire department, then was an actual firefighter the following 16 years.

"I had grown up on a farm, so I knew about hard work and I liked the idea of being involved with a team, and enjoyed being outside and in the fresh air," Stewart said about becoming a rower.

In the fall of 1982, Stewart came to Western and during freshman orientation saw a shell on Red Square and decided to give it a try. She was up every morning at 5:30 a.m., done and waiting for a ride at 7:30 a.m. in order to make her 8 a.m. class.

That first year, she rowed in the Vikings' freshmen boat.

Moen background

Kristi Moen worked 30 years at Boeing in the Puget Sound area, being involved with communications, Global Corporate Citizenship, business operations and other miscellaneous positions.

She has stayed active after rowing, doing triathlons for the last 15 years and Ironman and half Ironman races for the past 10 years.

Moen loves hiking, backpacking, cycling and most other outdoor activities. If she can snap a decent wildlife photo while doing any of those activities, even better.

"I don't recall where I got the idea of rowing," she said, "but before I even entered college in the fall of 1981, I was determined to get on the team despite my 5-foot-2 frame."




Team photo (L-R): Jennifer Demitruk, Betsy Bower, Debbie Callan, Karen Stewart, Cathy White, Kristi Moen, Kim Refvem, Jackie Barrett. Kneeling Helen Robinson.