Throughout the 1980s and ranging into the late ’90s, the Cal Poly Rowing Club was a strong and vibrant entity existing harmoniously within the campus community.
Unfortunately, the former board and its members experienced a series of incalculable setbacks during the mid- to late-1990s, such as alleged misappropriation of funds, as well as an outstanding ASI loan of thousands of dollars.
For the recently re-established Rowing Club’s executive board, starting off the year with a clean slate rates pretty important on their to-do list.
In the process of overcoming obstacles leftover from the past, the club needed some new members. One way to do so is by creating a new and effective board.
Enter into the picture club president and physics junior, Florian Mettetal and vice president, team captain and history freshman Michelle Oga.
Mettetal said that between himself, Oga and the other board members, there are about a dozen people actively working to build a new and better club.
“Our Facebook group contains about 25 (people) and the mailing list has about 50 people that we’re in contact with,” Mettetal said. “We have a pretty big pool of people to draw from that are really interested in the club.”
Mettetal said that choosing the right school largely depended on the right materials involved, one of which revolved around the issue of campus clubs.
“I wouldn’t even be at Cal Poly if it wasn’t for the clubs here,” he stated.
When weighing his decision as to which university he thought he should attend, after noticing that Cal Poly had no rowing club, Mettetal envisioned starting one of his own were he to become a Mustang.
Oga recalled that she became active in rowing following a five-year involvement in the sport of gymnastics.
“I needed something that was low impact,” she said. “My body just couldn’t take the pounding of the gymnastics anymore.”
After discovering rowing, Oga said that her heart was captivated; there was no turning back.
“I absolutely fell in love with it that first day,” Oga said. “It just been a really nice transition.”
Oga said that even though her high school did not have a rowing club, as a sophomore she always found a way to stay involved in her beloved sport.
“We had to row on the Petaluma River with the small North Bay Rowing Club,” Oga reminisced. “It was really nice because we had a great sense of family and community out there.”
As he arrived at Cal Poly, Mettetal did some research on the history and problematic situation that plagued the early club.
When scrolling through archives at the Kennedy Library, he found that the once thriving club essentially became defunct due to the fact of trying to repay the large loan amount.
“Most of their earned money went into the repayment of that loan,” Mettetal said. “So there just wasn’t much left over for the club to do anything else.”
Two of the final requirements left for the Rowing Club to become officially chartered is finding an advisor and creating a Web site.
Mettetal said that as for the advisor spot, they have a strong candidate in mind.
And as for the site name, he said it will probably be called cprowing.com. It is just a matter of time now before they are up and running.