The Lake and Campus Life

A Goodly Spin Down the Lake

Sailing and crew are the most visible keepers of the watersport tradition — a tradition more recent and unlikely than you might expect.

"No college in the land has better facilities for boating. . . . Just across the road from the students’ rooms lies the lake and the boat house is not over 200 yards distant."

— Hobart Herald editorial, 1879

From a gull’s-eye view the Colleges’ boating facilities make quite an impression. On any given afternoon the HWS sailors take to the lake from a dock sitting below the South Main Street overlook. Meanwhile, HWS rowers glide before a new boathouse and bulkhead on the placid waters of the Seneca Barge Canal.

The excellent facilities are well in line with the success of both crew and sailing teams. HWS sailors regularly visit the top of the national collegiate rankings, climbing as high as third at one point last season. The William Smith crew team was invited to the first ever NCAA Women’s Rowing Championships in Sacramento, Calif. — the herons were the only Division III varsity eight in the field.

It wasn’t always so. Until very recently, organized sailing and crew were tenuous prospects, chiefly dependent on the tenacity of would-be boaters.

In the spring of 1879, editors of the Hobart Herald admonished students and faculty for the fact that "the Hobart Navy is a pleasing myth and nothing more." They asked students to contribute $5 each to fund the purchase of new boats. Once the students had "awakened to a sense of their duty" (and raised a total of $240) everyone, apparently, got in on the act. The Herald reported the following autumn that, "The ladies of Geneva have now taken the matter in hand. They give an entertainment at Linden Hall . . . the proceeds of which are to go towards purchasing new boats for the College."

Despite the fund-raising efforts, by 1885 the Hobart boathouse (located beneath the Colleges near the present dock) held only "a few useless shells and one serviceable four oared gig, in which latter craft many a joyous crew, in the long, spring afternoons, was wont to take a goodly spin down the lake returning home in the late twilight after having beguiled some kindly farmer’s wife into furnishing them with a savory supper from her bountiful larder," according to yearbooks.

Fire claimed the Colleges’ first boathouse in 1895 or so. It was not soon replaced, and the Hobart Navy sank deeper into myth during the early part of this century. In the 1950s, however, sailing had re-surfaced as "an official minor sport at Hobart." By 1954, "The Hobart Corinthian Yachting Club . . . organized an impressive number of sailing enthusiasts. Although having none of their boats . . . the club competed against Navy, Maryland, Georgetown, Rochester, and George Washington University " (yearbooks again). In 1955, "because of the avid interest of William Smith students in the sport . . . it was decided that William Smith would join with the Hobart team."

In the 1970s, "we dragged people out who had the least bit of knowledge and basically taught them to sail," says Katie Coleman Nichol ‘74. Nichol, soon to be inducted into the Heron Hall of Honor and her mates sailed from the Seneca Yacht Club on the east side in borrowed "sailing school dinghies." Even that, she recalls, was better than sailing at Cornell where "they had these god-awful Grumman things that tipped all the time."

Rowing at HWS has taken a rather different tack, evolving since the ‘80s from a collective of enthusiasts to a sanctioned club sport in the 1990s to today’s William Smith varsity squad (pictured). (Varsity status for Hobart crew was recently proposed, as well). The smooth waters of the Seneca Barge Canal, which once drew students for picnics and canoe outings, now draw the Colleges’ rowers and their rabid supporters. A spacious new boathouse (constructed in 1995) hosts the teams. There, on a brisk spring afternoon, the sculls shoot by amid the shouts of competition, against the backdrop of a nearly unspoiled opposite shore. The scene fairly drips with collegiate atmosphere.

The editors of today’s Herald are unlikely to take issue. Sailors, rowers, parents, and dedicated alums have permanently "put boats on the lake."

Peter Troxler ‘94, one of the sailors who helped secure a bright future for sailing at HWS, shares the views of the Herald of 1879. "We had to do something. The lake is just such a fantastic resource. I think it says something when you pull into campus and look out and see our boats out there."

It does make an impression. Ayesha Demond ‘01, a first-year rower from Schenectady, N.Y., acknowledges the pull of the lake. "I didn’t want to attend William Smith initially. My mother dragged me to visit. But when we drove in and I saw the lake it felt like I was home, like I’d been there before." — P.R.

The Seneca Lake series was researched and written by Dana Cooke and Peter Rolph '85 — writer/editors in the Office of College Relations. Portions of the series also appear in the Fall '97 issue of The Pulteney St. Survey. To request a copy, e-mail Kathy Marshall at marshall@hws.edu.