IRA Regatta: New Kiel bolsters UW shell

The junior in the all-important stroke seat for the Washington varsity at this week's national men's championships didn't even rate a bio in the Huskies' media guide when the school year started.

Kiel Petersen was just another body in the UW navy when the fall season started.

His route to the varsity stroke seat — the rower in front of the coxswain who sets the pace for the rest of the boat — is a tale of a sickly child who eventually got healthy, weight reduction in college and one long, useful bicycle ride down the Pacific Coast.

Petersen, 21, who grew up in Kitsap County and is the son of a former submarine officer, weighed 256 pounds when he arrived at UW three years ago from Shawnigan Lake School north of Victoria, B.C.

That's a good weight for a tight end but not for a rower, because excess weight slows a boat. The problem was that Petersen, who weighed 235 during his senior year at the B.C. boarding school, was ill with a summer lung infection and put on couch-potato pounds. Petersen never made the top UW freshman boat and last year never got higher than the No. 3 overall boat.

Still, he had been whittling off pounds ever since he arrived at UW. Today, he is 6 feet 4, 200 pounds. He lost weight with attention to diet but mostly by burning calories in aerobic activity such as stationary bicycle riding.

"The most surprising thing for me — and I think a lot of people who struggle to lose weight don't realize it — is that the heart rate (to effectively lose weight) isn't necessarily a hard one to hit," he said. "And it gets lower the older you get. I would just sit there on a bike and listen to music or I'd go to the IMA (intramural building) and spin and watch TV, putting in the time."

Last September, Petersen and about a dozen current and former UW rowers rode bicycles from Seattle to San Francisco.

"We really pushed each other," he said. "We weren't carrying any gear because we had a support truck, and so we averaged 20 miles an hour."

Petersen hit 47 mph down one hill.

Rowing may look like an "arm and shoulder sport," but anyone who has pulled a competitive oar can tell you that most of the power is supplied by the legs. Bicyling, which has become Petersen's favorite hobby, has had crossover benefits.

Petersen was stroke of the junior-varsity boat for most of this spring. When he went to a practice early in the week of the Windermere Cup, he was stunned to see that the popsicle stick with his name on it had been moved from the JV lineup to the varsity boat.

He recalls an initial reaction of "that's interesting" followed by anxiety. Suddenly, he was the stroke in a shell with some of the nation's best collegiate rowers, some of whom have rowed internationally.

Putting Petersen in the varsity boat was one of several changes coach Bob Ernst began making that week. Three members of last year's varsity that finished second to Harvard at the Intercollegiate Rowing Association Regatta are now in the JV boat.

"Kiel had been doing a good job of stroking the JVs," Ernst said earlier this week from Princeton, N.J., where the Huskies have been training for the IRA regatta that starts tomorrow on the Cooper River. "We needed a little more length and rhythm in the varsity."

The revised lineup clicked, and the Huskies beat the Czech Republic and Cornell in the Windermere Cup then suffered a disappointing loss to favored Cal at the Pac-10 championships. Going into the IRA Regatta, the Huskies' varsity eight is ranked No. 4 in the nation behind Harvard, Cal and Princeton.

"People have counted us out as a crew to win and I think we've got a chance to turn some heads," said Petersen, who is a business major who just made the dean's list.

No one has enjoyed Petersen's rise to the varsity more than his mother, Randi Strong-Soderstrom, who is remarried and lives in Poulsbo. When she sees her athletic son stroking the Huskies' varsity, she thinks of how ill he was as a child.

"I didn't sleep through the night," she said of the early years. "I was certain I was going to go in and find him dead."

The rower himself remembers, "I was really a sickly little kid. I was pale and I had bags under my eyes all the time."

When she watched the awards ceremony for the Windermere Cup, his mother said out loud, "When he was 5 years old, we were told he would never play sports because of his asthma. I said, 'You're just a doctor. We'll figure this out.' "

She wound up taking Kiel to a chiropractor, Stephen Clark, who changed his diet.

"Complex carbohydrates and sugar didn't do well with his body," she said. Kiel began to improve. By age 8, he was sleeping through the night for the first time. About a year later, he was able to join a basketball team. At Shawnigan Lake, he played rugby and rowed.

This week, he pulls the most important oar for the Huskies. For him, it's exciting and shows how far he has come.

For his mother, it's something else.

"A miracle," she said.

Craig Smith: 206-464-8279 or csmith@seattletimes.com