Those out enjoying the fall colors surrounding Lake Leelanau tomorrow stand a good chance of seeing rowers from Lake Leelanau Rowing Club (LLRC) whir by in a 20-mile, multi-boat roundtrip trek from their home dock at Fountain Point Resort to South End Tiki & Resort.

Saturday’s 5-hour tour is strictly for fun, but rowing is also a serious pursuit at LLRC, says founder Erik Zehender, whose members participate in every national competition, including the Head Of The Charles Regatta, held in October on the Charles River in Massachusetts. It’s the largest two-day regatta in the world. This year — a first in 55 years — the races have gone virtual, and LLRC will compete from home.

But having home waters as idyllic and highly varied as Lake Leelanau right out the backdoor is a major reason why Zehender, himself a USRowing Level III certified coach, founded the nonprofit LLRC at Fountain Point Resort eleven years ago.

He tells the Leelanau Ticker he saw rowing as a natural fit for Leelanau County: “We live in the Swiss Alps of rowing…with our natural resources, we look at rowing as something everyone in Northern Michigan should grow up knowing.”

But as a fourth-generation innkeeper at Michigan’s oldest waterfront resort, he knew part of keeping a national historic district living and breathing was also to bring diverse year-round activities to Fountain Point. “It is important to me this is not a museum, but a timeless place with cultural activities for people to participate in.”

LLRC year-round rowing programs include recreational adult and high school competitive rowing for Leelanau and Grand Traverse counties and beyond. At LLRC, novice visually impaired rowers or cancer survivors also may row free of charge.

The rowing club, says Zehender, has evolved from a motley crew of pioneers and risktakers like himself to a membership of those who “want stability and excellence in their sport and want a good experience. They are not here to waste time.”

As part of that growth, last season Zehender hired Ukrainian rower Viktor Grebennykov as the competition tract coach. Grebennykov is a triple world champion skuller who also competed in the men's eight event at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

Zehender says part of Grebennykov’s gift as a coach is seeing opportunity. “What Viktor does is watch all the kids rowing as singles, then — as was the case last fall — say, ‘you guys together, as a pair…you will row exactly like the New Zealand Olympic pair.’ These two kids rode together for just one year and took 3rd place at Head Of The Hooch regatta in Chattanooga, Tennessee, ahead of 60 to 70 teams,” he says.

The LLRC competitive high school team is made up of students from schools across Leelanau County, Grand Traverse County and beyond, some in the past even making the drive from Elk Rapids. The regular competition season for high school crew is in the spring — this year, a spring season that never happened. So LLRC hosted a special Sunday regatta at the end of September, where rowers from East Grand Rapids, Forest Hills Northern from Grand Rapids and Glorious Gate Rowing Association (of Fort Wayne) converged on Lake Leelanau to compete against the LLRC team. “It was so exciting for everyone to feel the race atmosphere again,” says Grebennykov.

Another rowing opportunity LLRC hadn’t anticipated sprang up due to COVID-19: high school athletes who are missing out on their regular sport — or just want to cross-train to stay in peak condition — are now able to row with the team as many days a week as they like without committing to the LLRC’s historically rigorous training schedule.

“We are making a big change,” says Zehender, “It’s always been all-or-nothing, six-days-a-week, for two-and-a-half hours a day, and their coach is an Olympian. This winter, kids that might want to still play basketball or be on the ski team can train one day a week here. It is something we should have done a long time ago.”

Because LLRC teams race in USRowing-sanctioned races, many local students have, or will, continue onto Division 1 Rowing colleges and universities. Among them: Wren Wodek, a senior at West Senior High. She is an LLRC coxswain — the person on the boat in charge of the navigation and steering — a role she was offered scholarships for at five Division 1 schools. Says Wodek, “I am verbally committed to the University of Minnesota. They have a whole new coaching staff and I want to be a part of that rise to the top.”

Zehender says three graduating seniors last spring also went on to row at Division 1 schools — Georgetown, Harvard, and Wisconsin — and two young women currently rowing for the University of Louisville and the University of Kansas will have boats at LLRC named after them this summer. “That is our tradition if you go on to row all four years — a boat named after you,” explains Zehender.

Another LLRC rising star to watch: Lila Miller. Miller is a junior at Traverse City Central who is visually impaired and, for the second year in a row, won gold at the 2020 USRowing Youth National Championships. There, Miller competes in the U19 Inclusive division. Lila’s mom, Michelle Miller, tells the Leelanau Ticker, “When she is on the water, that is her form of independence. She goes out in a single and she has a coach telling her the directions, but she is doing it on her own. She also rows in the eights and the double. She’s been thrown into lots of different boats, and she is able to keep up with the kids.”

More than keep up: At the Lake Leelanau regatta on September 29, says Zehender, “Lila was stroking the 8ths — that means everybody else follows your stroke — and here it was with seven other high school girls in the boat. She is unbelievable.”

He adds, “Lila brings so much joy. At practice after a long day at school, kids can’t even spend a minute with Lila without forgetting their problems and being appreciative of what she has done and has overcome.”

Wodek says there is at least one more chance to witness a regatta on Lake Leelanau this season: “Since we didn’t get a full racing season, our coach had the idea for us to race wearing our individual school colors.” The LLRC teammates will be boated by their schools to race against each other.

There is a lot of school pride across the county, says Zehender, and he is looking forward to the spectator support at this multi-school regatta. Stay tuned on Lake Leelanau Rowing Club’s Facebook page for details.