Highlights for 1981
The Father of Woodbridge High School Crew or for that matter the entirety of Prince William County Crew programs is John Ashton. John Ashton was a former National Champion Rower at Washington-Lee under legendary Crew coach Charlie Butt in the spring of 1960. Ashton, along with other members of the Crew Team played football. The fall of 1959, Washington Lee won the Virginia State Championship of which John Ashton was part of the team. In the spring of 1960 many of football team members rowed in Crew. Ashton rowed the four seat in the Varsity Eight that year as his boat won gold at NOVAS, Stotesbury, and Nationals. As a result of their sweeping the three major regattas in America, the Washington-Lee Varsity Eight competed in the Henley Royal Regatta in England. After college Ashton settled in the Northern Virginia area. Then married and beginning a young family he continued to get out on the water when he was not teaching high school and coaching football. He realized that the Occoquan River was a wonderful river to row. With the persistent encouragement of Ashton’s former Crew coach and mentor Charlie Butt, John decided to see what could be done to start competitive rowing on the Occoquan. At that time, Ashton was teaching and coaching football in Fairfax County, but in the mid-1970s had just purchased a home in the newly developing Lake Ridge area of Prince William County.
With Charlie Butt’s support Ashton pursued the development of a boathouse and rowing facility out of the Occoquan River. In 1977, mostly as a result of the Prince William shore being mostly residential, Charlie Butt and John Ashton pursued and received approval for the building of a rowing facility and boathouse out of Sandy Run Park in Fairfax County as Charlie Butt became finance chairman for the building of the Occoquan rowing facility at Sandy Run . The first boathouse and facility were ready by the spring of 1978. At that time the only high schools in the area with Crew or Rowing teams were George Washington High out of Alexandria 1947, Hammond High School in Alexandria (both Washington and later Hammond later became middle schools sending their students to T.C. Williams in 1965 and 1985) in the Washington and Lee out of Arlington (1949), T.C. Williams out of Alexandria (1965), Fort Hunt and JEB Stuart out of Fairfax, and Yorktown out of Arlington (1968) and they all rowed on the Potomac River. At that time, John Ashton was coaching high school football, but also was coaching the George Mason University Rowing program out of the new Occoquan Rowing facility.
With the Occoquan River now being used for organized rowing, Ashton then turned his attention to rowing on the Prince William County shore of the Occoquan where he then lived at Lake Ridge with his growing family. He envisioned Prince William County schools participating in Crew, giving his own children and others the chance to row. During January 1981 he conducted a survey at Woodbridge Senior High about interest in a Crew Program. The interest was very high; however, the School Board did not allow a competitive Crew program as a result of Crew not being a sanctioned VHSL sport at the time. In order to allow for students of Woodbridge to compete they needed to compete as an organization other than Woodbridge Senior High School. Ashton then was instrumental in forming an organization called the Prince William Crew Association in 1981. This allowed students at Woodbridge Senior High School to compete in regattas rowing under the PWCA banner. However, in order for it to be considered an authorized organization in the school, students from Woodbridge whom wanted to row formed the Woodbridge Crew Club which allowed announcements and recruitment to take place at the school. The Woodbridge Crew Club also needed a staff member at the school to sponsor the crew club. That first spring of 1981, almost 100 students signed up, predominately freshman and sophomores, to join the Woodbridge Crew Club whose members then participated under the PWCA program.
John Ashton headed up the PWCA program and Floyd “Joe” Freeze was hired as the Woodbridge Crew Club sponsor and coach for the Woodbridge students. At that time, there were not any docks or boat houses on the Prince William County side of the Occoquan River so rowers would have to row out of the Sandy Run Boat House in Fairfax County across the Occoquan River. Realizing that driving everyday to Sandy Run might kill the program before it was started, the PWCA built a small dock on the Prince William shore of the river, just pat the end of Mohican Road. From there students boarded a pontoon boat with oars which was used as a practice rowing pontoon which students rowed to get across the river to the Sandy Run rowing facility. At that time Mohican Drive was mostly an unpaved road. It was there that parents of Woodbridge students picked up there rowers at the end of practice, before the era of cell phones. Needless to say, reading material was a must for waiting parents. Since neither the Woodbridge Crew Club nor the Prince William Crew Association had any equipment, other schools and rowing organizations loaned Woodbridge students there older boats and oars to get started. Most of the coaching was performed by John Ashton whom met the Woodbridge Students at the Occoquan River, as he has teaching in Fairfax, to begin their practice. Coach Freeze assisted and learned. Most of northern Virginia was in its infancy concerning scholastic crew. In 1981 there were only five other high schools; Fort Hunt, J.E.B. Stuart, T.C. Williams, Washington-Lee, and Yorktown that competed during that first year of Woodbridge Crew. As a result of the youthfulness and inexperience Woodbridge rowers did not shine in regattas that first spring but Woodbridge students were rowing on the water and success would come.
Head Crew Coach: John Ashton
Head Club Sponsor and Coach: Floyd Freeze