The club rowing team is a lot more than a couple of guys sitting in a boat, rowing across a lake, according to Steven Marks, the captain of the club rowing team.

The sport is extremely team heavy and requires the athletes to spend many hours practicing and working with other members of the team.

“The best thing about rowing is the commitment that you get,” Marks said. “If you take off one practice, you’re not just taking off for yourself, your taking off for eight other people.”

And the team doesn’t play fluff matches either — the team gets to compete against many teams such as North Carolina and Duke, along with others.

According to Courtney Simpson, a sophomore in history, one of the best experiences has been going against some of the best competition.

“Looking out at all the schools we were competing against was really awesome,” Simpson said. “To know that we were in this big of a competition, being a club sport, with this many teams was really cool.”

The team, which received the “Club of the Year” award last season, got $5,000 because of the award. These funds help with the team’s traveling, and its fund-raising, something the players consider important.

One way the team has cut back on expenses has been to travel with some of its biggest rivals — the Tar Heels and the Blue Devils.

The squad is split up into four teams — men’s varsity, men’s novice, women’s varsity and women’s novice. While the team said it faces plenty of tough competition, there is no experience required to join the team.

Both team’s practice at Lake Wheeler and the women’s squad practices twice a week, while the men go out four times a week.

According to Duran Pardue, a senior in chemistry, the best part was last spring.

“Definitely my favorite memory was my first regatta in the spring. We were in South Carolina, and both our novice 4 and our novice 8 won and got gold medals,” Pardue said.

The team doesn’t limit its time together to just practice. Marks said they do plenty outside of practice.

“We’re all friends; we all hang out,” Marks said. “[At one regatta], none of us shaved for two months, and we got up there and were all scratching. You can see pictures of our boats where we all have our beards. It was just a great experience. One of the guys was graduating, and it was just like a culmination of the team overall.”