Coincidence or Fate

Brooks brought Peter Sharis '86 to science, and a teacher's influence pushed him to take up rowing during his college years at Harvard University. Three decades later, Sharis is an accomplished doctor, an Olympics veteran and the coach of a rowing club that rivals East and West Coast powerhouses from its perch on the Mississippi River.

The Two Rivers YMCA in Moline, Illinois, services a largely rural community nestled between four small Midwestern cities: Moline, Rock Island, Illinois, Bettendorf, Iowa, and Davenport, Iowa. Like many other YMCA associations across the country, Two Rivers YMCA offers swimming lessons, childcare and a fitness room. It also has a learn to row program: Part of the mission of the YMCA, after all, is to provide programming that benefits the local community, and a 2011 merger with the local, historic Quad Cities Rowing Club furthered that goal. Dr. Peter Sharis '86, a local cardiologist who had rowed in the 1992 Olympics and for Harry Parker at Harvard University, is the volunteer head coach of Y Quad Cities Rowing.

That's the routine description of the learn-to-row program at Two Rivers YMCA. Here's the description that makes one wonder whether coincidence or fate is at work on the Midwestern plains: Y Quad Cities Rowing isn't like most beginner rowing programs. Sharis's program welcomes children who have never laid eyes on an oar to step into a boathouse for the first time, and it turns them into determined champions. Every year, Junior and Master rowers compete nationally and internationally. This year, Y Quad Cities Rowing entered four boats in the sculling events at youth nationals; three won gold and one won silver. The past few years have seen six Head of the Charles wins, 10 youth national championship titles and more than 20 club nationals wins. In July, a Y Quad Cities Rowing women's junior quad won the Diamond Jubilee Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta — the first international crew to win the event.

If one follows the trajectory of Sharis's life, two intertwined themes appear: A love of science and a push to pick up an oar, both of which stretch back to his days on Great Pond Road.

"I had some wonderful science teachers at Brooks," Sharis says. "Nick Evangelos was a great mentor and really got me extremely interested in science. Once I got into rowing at Harvard, I got even more interested in the physiology and the cardiac system, so not surprisingly, when I went on to medical school, cardiology was the area I ended up focusing on." Sharis also credits Brooks with prompting him to experiment with rowing at Harvard: Although Sharis didn't row at Brooks (he was a three-sport athlete, though, with baseball as his spring sport), his advisor and math teacher David Swift was the crew coach. "He was always suggesting that I should try out rowing," Sharis says.

Swift continued to encourage Sharis to try crew at Harvard, and Sharis finally made his way to the Harvard boathouse on his former teacher's advice. "He told me that being tall and having good strength and endurance are the big, key elements to being successful," Sharis remembers. "He knew I worked hard in the sports I played, and in the classroom, and being persistent and working hard gets good results." Sharis, who is 6'4" tall, made the crew at Harvard, and ended up rowing for two national championship crews, in 1988 and 1989.

Then, after walking on to a two-time national championship crew, the man who had never touched an oar at Brooks took it a step further: He made the United States Olympic team five years after beginning the sport, and rowed in the men's cox-less pair event at the 1992 Olympic games in Barcelona.

Sharis acknowledges that the process of going from novice to Olympic athlete in five years was a "pretty amazing process," but his explanation shows his modest, workmanlike attitude. "I was tall, I had the right height," he says. "Rowing's a lot of hard work, and you want to have a good endurance base, which I had from all the years I played sports at Brooks. And then I was also the type of person who was willing to constantly grind it out and work hard."

That ethos of working hard and grinding it out translates back to Sharis's work as coach at Y Quad Cities Rowing. Although it's a volunteer position, Sharis devotes much of his time to the club. He explains that because of the long Midwestern winters, his rowers are inside from fall through the end of March. Sharis makes the most of the long indoor training season by harvesting data from the rowing machines his team uses. He treats rowing as a science, and constructs individualized training programs for juniors that, one assistant coach has claimed, rival the workouts assigned at the top collegiate rowing programs in the country. Sharis records, breaks down and analyzes every workout, measuring each against national records and tracking the progress of each athlete. When the crew is on the water, the gathering of data continues: Sharis's rowers use GPS-enabled stroke coaches and oarlocks that measure power output.

"I'm pretty systematic about it," Sharis says. "There's a lot of data now that you can get with rowing. Ultimately, the kids have to be fit and row really well technically, but the objective data part of it has really changed a lot since when I was doing it."

Between coaching, poring over data and maintaining his cardiology career, Sharis has what he calls "long weeks." But, he says, his packed schedule is a labor of love. "I really love both things," he says, referring to rowing and cardiology. "To me, it doesn't really feel like I'm working as hard as I am, or like I'm putting in as many hours as I am."