Local and regional athletes to row in 10th anniversary Moose Nugget Regatta on Wasilla Lake Saturday

WASILLA — Anchorage Rowing Association will host Alaska’s largest rowing regatta Saturday at 10 a.m. at Wasilla Lake. The 10th anniversary Moose Nugget Regatta features 1,000-meter sprint races involving 68 athletes from Anchorage, Seward, Cooper Landing, Moose Pass, Girdwood, Soldotna, Kenai, and Homer.

Teams entered include Alaska Midnight Sun Rowing Association, host Anchorage Rowing Association and Kenai Crewsers Rowing Club. Racers may compete in up to four events and will earn medals for first place finishes, while teams earn points toward a regatta trophy for each boat’s respective finish in races with all three teams.

The first boats launch at 9:30 a.m. to warm up for 18 races starting at 10:00.

Races include eights, fours, and pairs, competed in sweep rowing style with one oar per person, and quad, double and single sculls competed with two oars per person. Participant categories include men, women, mixed, juniors and novice.

Age handicapping will be applied to all open masters races to account for racer ages ranging from 27 (the minimum age for Masters rowing) to more than 70.

This year’s race is missing Cordova Rowing Club, which hoped to attend but withdrew when commercial fishing schedules took their toll on practices. The club couldn’t field a team for the Moose Nugget Regatta but hopes to make amends when they host their first regatta on Aug. 27 in Cordova.

On the occasion of the Moose Nugget Regatta’s 10th anniversary, Anchorage Rowing Association reflects on how the event has changed to fit the needs of the rowing community. First held as the Moose Nugget Miler, the regatta initially featured mile-long races but was shortened to 1,000-meter races to match the national and international sprint races the teams most often encountered. Similarly, the race was first held in the fall but was moved to a mid-summer timeframe to provide an easily obtainable mid-season goal, which could be followed by training for longer-distance 3-mile races traditionally held in the fall.

The race moved from Lake Lucile to the present venue at Wasilla Lake in 2007 to better accommodate the growing group of competitors and spectators and to provide a more visible race.

“It’s exciting to watch 60-ft-long boats racing side-by-side right next to the highway,” said Ed Hall, one of the primary organizers throughout the event’s history. “We wanted to give the public a chance to watch.”

That visibility brought in an extra rower last year, when local rower Lance Baughman saw the races setting up that morning and found himself lining up at the starting line by lunchtime. Anchorage Rowing Association is celebrating the Moose Nugget Regatta’s 10th anniversary by providing colorful socks adorned with the event’s logo, a moose rowing against a backdrop of mountains, to each entrant.

Among the races featuring all three teams this year, the mixed double sculls could have the most interesting results. Alaska Midnight Sun Rowing Association fielded two teams with an amazing three-decade gap in average ages. To overcome the age handicap owned by the husband-and-wife team of Jim and Karen Hurd, average age 69, the AMSRA-Winslow boat, average age 37, will need to cross the finish line 35.9 seconds ahead of them in a race that only lasts about five minutes.

Similarly in the men’s single sculls (1X) Anchorage’s George Bryson holds a 30 second time advantage at age 60 over AMSRA’s 40-year-old Kent Peterson, the youngest competitor in the race and last year’s winner. Anchorage’s Dan Brokaw is back in the 1X race this year after taking 2010 off — Brokaw has wins in seven of the previous nine men’s single scull races at the Moose Nugget.

More information including the race schedule, boat names and lanes is available at http://www.anchoragerowing.com/moosenuggetnew.html or e-mail moosenugget@anchoragerowing.com.

Information courtesy of Anchorage Rowing Association