Agee sisters take their teamwork to new arena with Clemson

When Kristen Agee elected to follow her sister, Jenn, and join the crew team at Clemson, she did so with the same rowing experience her big sis had when she walked on to (or more accurately, stumbled onto) the team two years earlier.

Which is to say neither of them had any rowing experience whatsoever.

What they had was an athletic pedigree -- their mother, Denise, played tennis at Clemson and is a teaching pro, and their father, Joe, played football at William and Mary -- as well as a history of athletic success on the tennis courts and lacrosse field at Bluffton High School.

Yet neither of the Agee sisters expected to be sitting where they are this weekend, in the Tigers' second varsity eight boat with their oars in the Cooper River as Clemson rows in the NCAA Rowing Championships in Cherry Hill, N.J.

It was almost by accident that the Agees ever found themselves with oars in their hands. Jenn passed up opportunities to play college lacrosse and landed at Clemson, where she was convinced to join a rowing team that had experienced little success since its inaugural season of 1998-99.

"Our team was not anything like it is now when I started," Jenn said. "We were average at best."

That changed when Richard Ruggieri took over as the Tigers' coach last season, helping the varsity eight become the first Clemson boat to qualify for the NCAA Championships. With a strong recruiting class, which included Kristen, the Tigers took another step this year, winning their first ACC title and taking the entire team to nationals for the first time in the program's history.

And the Agee sisters were there, Jenn on the port side, Kristen on the starboard, when the second varsity eight qualified Friday for the semifinals. This morning, they will race in the petite finals, which will determine seventh through 12th places.

Somehow, these sisters who went to Clemson with almost no experience on the water -- "I go to the beach. Does that count?" Kristen joked after landing a partial scholarship last March -- have become key components in the Tigers' rise to prominence. Kristen was named the team's most improved novice rower this year, just like Jenn was two years ago, and she earned a spot in the second varsity boat for last week's NCAA regionals and this week's nationals.

It's easy to imagine the duo working together in unison, in the boat and on dry land, just as they did as star lacrosse players and the top doubles team for the Bobcats.

"There are a lot of aspects of the sport that are really mentally tough that I've never had to put myself through," Kristen said. "I don't know if I could have done it without someone as close as my sister there telling me, 'I've been through it. You're going to be fine.' Just giving me moral support."

They say the experience hasn't made them closer, but only because they couldn't get any closer, which is always a plus in the close quarters of a row boat.

"I was a little bit unsure if she would actually like it or not," Jenn said, "and there were plenty of times when she told me she didn't. But that's exactly how I remember it my first year. I'm just really proud of how she's done and how she's taken to the sport that I've ended up loving so much."