Benefield: Sonoma County rowers ready for shot at national championships

It helps that Ryan Cardiff and Ben Holm are friends.

Cardiff and Holms of the Petaluma-based North Bay Rowing Club will compete this weekend in the pairs division at the U.S. Rowing Youth National Championships in West Windsor, N.J., having advanced from the competitive Southwest regional championship last month.

Not bad for a couple of guys who just started rowing together in pairs this spring.

“Ryan and I have been working really hard for the past two months, which is a pretty short amount of time compared with most of the clubs that have been working on their pairs much longer,” Holm said.

Cardiff, who just graduated from Petaluma High School, and Holm, an incoming senior at Maria Carrillo, have been teammates for three years but have always worked together on bigger boats, with more guys. This pair thing - two guys, one oar a piece - is new.

Working on a pair is “unstable and difficult,” according to Cardiff, who is headed to Stanford in the fall to row. “You have to really trust the person you are with.”

“It’s definitely our chemistry,” Holm said. “We get along really well and like each other. It’s really hard to row with somebody you don’t like.”

But you don’t have to be alike, apparently.

“I’m kind of chatty and kind of spacey but he’s very focused and quiet and that’s very important to have in the boat. He kind of keeps things running so we don’t crash,” Cardiff said.

According to their coach, Will Whalen, Cardiff is in charge of setting the pace, how many strokes per minute the pair will row while Holm steers.

“They have a great working relationship,” Whalen said. “They both kind of clock in and get the work done.”

Whatever the team is doing, it’s working.

Cardiff and Holm finished fourth in finals of the Southwest Youth Championship on Lake Natoma in Folsom, normally one spot out of a trip to nationals. But two pairs teams dropped the race to take part in a different category, paving the way for the North Bay rowers to give it a go on the biggest stage of the season.

More than 1,770 athletes from 30 states are expected to compete this weekend, according to Allison Meuller, director of communications for U.S. Rowing.

“Eighteen events are contested and there will be a national champion in each event,” she said. “This is the end. This is the pinnacle of the championship season.”

“For us, it’s really big because we are a pretty small club,” Holm said. “This is the first boat that our club has sent to nationals.”

“I’m excited because it is going to be really notable for us, I think,” Cardiff said. “This is the largest regatta that anyone in our program has been to. It’s exciting to meet the best rowers in the country.”

Whalen said the pair could make a showing in New Jersey.

“On paper, we look pretty quick,” he said. “I think we are moving the boat pretty well. We have raced really fast teams in our region and of the teams that are going to be there, we know we have beat one and that one beat us.”

For Cardiff and Holm, part of the excitement is seeing results from what was described as an evolving culture within the rowing club.

Cardiff credited Whalen, who rowed at Cal, with changing athletes’ attitudes about rowing and competing when he came in about four years ago.

“It just wasn’t a serious, competitive environment until Will came in,” Cardiff, a former football player, said.

“He came in and said, ‘That’s not going to be us anymore,’?” he said. “Then we started not losing races.”

But they kept having fun.

“We didn’t have to give up having fun to become competitive. We had fun before when we were losing, but now we are still making friends but doing it while winning gold medals,” Cardiff said.

That is evident in Cardiff and Holm’s friendship. It’s created a foundation for winning.

Those 5 a.m. workouts on the Petaluma River? They are made easier when Holm can spend the night at Cardiff’s Petaluma home.

“We hang out all the time outside of rowing,” Holm said. “I stay at his house a lot. I spend a lot of time with Ryan. I just enjoy being around him.”

But as far as the pair of them racing goes, “this is it,” according to Whalen.

This is where the pair gives it a final go before Cardiff heads off for college and Holm takes on his senior year.

“We are not really sure where we stand, but ultimately we just want to have our best race and say that we did our best,” Cardiff said.

You can reach staff columnist Kerry Benefield at 526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com, on Twitter @benefield and on Instagram at kerry.benefield.