Ben Bejoian rowing on the water ahead of Nationals.
By James Kinneen
Hometown Weekly Reporter
You might think you know all the Dover-Sherborn athletes making their marks in their respective sports. Maybe you watch the high school games on TV, read about them, or even attend them in person. But no matter how familiar you are with how the Raiders are doing this year, you probably don’t know there’s a Dover-Sherborn senior who is going to compete in Sarasota, Florida next week, looking to take home a gold medal at the US Rowing Youth National Championships.
That young man is future Trinity rower Benjamin Bejoian, who qualified and will compete as a doubles rower, though he has competed in many other types of rowing. After placing third in the Northeast Youth Regional Championships, which qualified him and his partner for nationals, Bejoian is preparing to face teams from places like Florida and California, which have the ability to row on the water year-round.
But while he has to row on an “erg” (shorthand for an ergometer or indoor rowing machine that claims to measure output) in the winter, it’s tough to think that any of those competitors will have worked harder than Bejoian. In fact, the only way they could have is if they trained every day of the week, all year, since Bejoian trains six days of the week, all year.
“On a summer, winter, fall, spiring, schedule,” he explained, “this past fall I did six days a week, this winter I did six days a week inside and this spring I’ve been doing six days a week, and then in the summer I will be doing six days a week, including two-a-days on four days of the week.”
A member of the Cambridge Boat Club, Bejoian had to deal with COVID cramping his ability to practice last year. The boathouse opted to do erg and weightlifting workouts via Zoom all winter, before he opted to hit the water in a single and train using guerrilla boat launches.
“During the summer I kind of just decided I was going to train by myself, I’m going to get my own single boat, so I was rowing by myself and it was kind of hard because I wasn’t at any boathouse so I had no place to store my boat. I would wake up every morning, put the boat on top of my truck with the boat rack that we had, and we would drive it in, take it off, walk the boat into the water and then just kind of wet launch from there. I’d kind of just place my boat in the water, pretty much like knee deep and then just get in my boat and go. That was pretty much what I did until the public docks were open again.”
Much of this desire to get on the water comes from Bejoian’s belief that despite colleges in large part recruiting on erg scores, training on the water is the far better way to prepare you for actual races. In fact, Bejoian noted he has bested athletes with far more impressive erg scores than him in actual, on-the-water races.
Bejoian got his start rowing as a sixth grader, when a friend asked him to come to a day camp with him. Bejoian fell in love with the sport, he believes in large part because of how much he loves being on the water. After trying out for his old school’s rowing team but not making it, he joined a club team, which allowed him to race in more regattas and paid off when he moved to the rowing team-less Dover-Sherborn school system.
Bejoian would like to see that element of the town change, though, noting that he’d be happy to come back as a volunteer coach if Dover-Sherborn had a team.
“Rowing is such a great sport that you can do throughout your whole life. It’s such a great camaraderie-building sport because you work with a team and really have to get to know the people you’re rowing with well. It would definitely be beneficial for it to be in a lot more schools and for it to get a lot more recognition, because it’s not at all really a well-known sport - it’s mostly seen as a high-intensity sport that nobody really wants to do. But once you actually start doing it, it becomes really fun. I would love to see a DS team. If it happened, I would definitely want to come back and be an assistant coach or volunteer coach every now and then, because I would definitely love to help out with that. It would be great for DS to branch out into other sports, because we’re so competitive in tennis, field hockey, cross country, track, football, lacrosse, all of those sports, so why not add another one onto that list, or at least try it out?”
One place he won’t be recruiting for future rowers is from his friend group. While they respect the effort he puts in, Bejoian says there’s a running joke between he and his friends where they loudly declare that rowing is obviously not a real sport, while wisely finding excuses for why they can’t try out his boat or go for a few rounds on the erg Bejoian has at his home.
But if it’s not the widespread admiration of his peers, money (he won’t be on scholarship next year) or the town-wide fame being a great high school athlete gets you, what motivates Bejoian to work so hard?
“I think my love for the sport and my drive to be better, no matter what, and to compete. Out of all the kids who row, we all have this same drive to be the best there is, and the best possible rower we can be. At least for me, I know I want to be the best rower I can possibly be, day in and day out, and I know I can get better. Even if I say I’m pretty experienced and I’m fast on the water and I think I’m pretty good, there’s always so much more I can be doing to get better. And I think that goes for everybody in every sport. There’s so much more you can do to get better in every sport, you just have to have the drive for it.”
Benjamin has the drive. We’ll see soon if he has a gold medal.
