Lamothe finds home at Brock
Signing up to row for the Brock University men’s rowing program was the right thing to do in Ian Lamothe’s eyes.
The Grade 12 student at Jean Vanier has been talking with the coaches at Brock since his Grade 11 year when the head coaching position at the South Niagara Rowing Club became vacant.
“Our school had no training program so I sent an email to Swede (assistant coach Burak) at Brock and I told him that we had no program and I really, really wanted to row. He let me come out and train with their heavyweight men. It was awesome.”
Brock let Lamothe use its single boats and invited him to attend the team’s training camp in Georgia this spring. He was the only high school kid invited to attend the camp.
For several months prior to the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lamothe had been working out at Brock under the watchful eyes of Burak and Greg Szybka, the Rowing Canada Next Gen hub coach, who is located at Brock.
“I was at Brock twice a day every day from November until February and they were the driving force in my training. They helped me and pushed me to get to where I got to.
“I have already engraved my name at Brock,” he said. “I put in countless hours there so I might as well go there.”
He estimates he trained 20-25 hours a week and the results were impressive.
“Ian has worked hard over the last 18 months and has gone from being just another high school rower to a serious contender for the Canadian junior team,” Brock head coach Peter Somerwil said. “Like so many other hard-working athletes, we will never know what could have happened.
“I am impressed how Ian could motivate himself as he was the only heavyweight male athlete at his high school and he still set tough standards for himself.”
Lamothe loved the strides he took during the winter.
“I was dropping ridiculous amounts of time. From February to March, I dropped 10 seconds on the erg. It was just screaming down,” he said. “I needed to hit 6:12 to make the junior national team and I was eight to 10 seconds away from qualifying and then COVID happened. That was kind of a bummer.”
He won the Leander erg event, was sixth in his division at the Canadian ergometer championships and second at the Ontario erg championships.
“It was kind of disappointing that rowing came to a sudden stop, but it didn’t really crush me because I still have a couple of years to make (junior) national teams.”
Lamothe is looking forward to eventually rowing for Brock.
“I am coming from a team with only four people to one with more than 80,” he said. “The atmosphere is just incredible and it is opening up a whole new world of racing and training that outweighs the disappointment that came from the cancelled events.”
Lamothe, who is planning to study medical sciences, has lofty goals in mind for his Brock rowing career.
“I want to get as fast as possible and bring home some medals.”
The 17-year-old St. Catharines started rowing in Grade 9 with Jean Vanier and trained in the summer with the South Niagara Rowing Club at the end of his Grade 9 and 10 years.
“The first two years of rowing were kind of getting the basics, learning nutrition, learning form and building muscle,” he said. “In Grade 11, I turned up the gears a little bit, set some goals and pushed for them. This past winter has just been an absolute grind.”
Rowing has become an integral component of the 6-foot-2, 210 pounder’s life
“Part of it comes from when I was younger and I had always been sort of a heavyset kid. When I came into high school, I wanted to change that and from what I had heard rowing was the way to do it.”
But it wasn’t easy for Lamothe, who weighed 236 pounds when he was 14.
“It has been like climbing a mountain but it has gotten better every year. I am discovering new things hitting new PBs and finding a whole level of abilities that I never knew that I had. I want to see how far my body can actually go.”
