Hubbard finds home at UW, Windermere Cup

The tallest and most powerful woman in the history of Washington rowing says she knew she had made the right decision when she watched her first Windermere Cup.

Sarah Hubbard, 6 feet 6, committed to Washington without leaving her home in Adelaide, Australia, then visited the UW campus for the 2003 Windermere Cup.

She and her mother, plus thousands of fans, watched crews race through the Montlake Cut in one of the biggest spectacles in world rowing. The crowd gets so loud that rowers have trouble hearing coxswains.

"I knew it was the right decision," she said.

Last year as a freshman, Hubbard was in the varsity boat that beat an Italian crew and UCLA in the regatta that precedes the opening-day yacht parade through the Cut.

The rare feat of earning a varsity seat as a freshman wasn't all Hubbard did last year. In February, she set an indoor world record for 18-year-olds on the ergometer (rowing machine), covering 2,000 meters in 6 minutes, 33 seconds.

Seattle, which already had a gifted, tall Australian female athlete (basketball star Lauren Jackson of the Storm), found itself with another one in a less-publicized sport.

Hubbard pulls the No. 6 oar for Washington, which makes her part of the "engine room" in the middle of the boat. She is so tall and her oar sweeps so far that extra room has to be created in her part of the shell to accommodate her, according to coach Eleanor McElvaine.

Hubbard will be in Washington's boat Saturday when the 12th-ranked Huskies will be underdogs to the Czech Republic's national under-23 crew. Cornell is the third boat in the 11:15 a.m. race.

The fourth-ranked Huskies men also face a U-23 crew from the Czech Republic and Cornell in the men's featured Windermere Cup at 11:25 a.m.

An added attraction this year will be a pairs race at 11:11 a.m. involving four members of the U.S. Olympic eight which won a gold medal. Huskies intern coaches Matt Deakin and Bryan Volpenhein will face Daniel Beery and Beau Hoopman, who have been training in San Diego and at Princeton.

Hubbard took up rowing at her private school, Pembroke, in Australia. Until she started pulling oars, tennis — not basketball or volleyball — was her No. 1 sport.

Hubbard says her accent is changing the longer she stays in the United States.

"When she first got here, we used to have to ask her to repeat things two or three times," McElvaine said.

"My accent is definitely more American," Hubbard said. "Now, it's my friends back home who are making fun of me."

The accent isn't the only thing that is becoming more Americanized. Hubbard, who was born in New Zealand, said she is looking into becoming a U.S. citizen with an eye toward the 2008 Olympics. She watched rowing at the 2000 Olympics in Australia.

Washington students like to say "G'Day, mate" to Hubbard, and some jokingly have called her "The Crocodile Hunter" and others have asked if she has a pet kangaroo. She doesn't, of course, but said kangaroos are a traffic hazard on the main road in her neighborhood.

A special treat for Hubbard this weekend is that both her parents, James and Cheryl, plan to visit for the regatta. The couple design and sell playgrounds.

Their daughter's main playground has become Lake Washington while pulling an oar.

"I love seeing the mountains and Mount Rainier," she said.

She also likes going fast.

Notes

• The renovated Conibear Shellhouse will be open to the public after Saturday's races until 4 p.m. The official ribbon cutting for the facility is tomorrow night. Rowers moved into the locker rooms this week and coaches move into their new offices next week. The following week, the academic support staff will move into its section of the $18 million building.

• The most spectacular addition to this year's Windermere Cup festivities will be a fireworks show at 9:30 p.m. tomorrow in Union Bay. A special free viewing area will be the UW baseball field, where the Huskies band and cheerleaders will perform. The fireworks will be choreographed to music on KMTT 103.7 FM.

• The UW men's varsity lineup for Saturday still hasn't been finalized by coach Bob Ernst.