Ashleigh Tate is looking forward to going to the Olympics in four years. She graduated from Oyster Bay High School in June, and started her college career at the University of Rhode Island this September with an eye toward crewing in the next Olympics. She crews with the Sagamore Rowing Association and in July won the title of U.S. Rowing National Junior Women's Single.

She brought back gold in the single and two bronzes, one in the qaud and one in the double: a good record for a young woman with an eye toward Olympic gold.

Besides crewing, Ashleigh rides hunters and jumpers out of the North Shore Equestrian Center. She is not a competitive rider, she rides as a way to keep fit. She is however a competitive rower.

How do the two sports fit together we asked. "It's awesome. They consume a lot of time but they have the same feel. The feel of the horse beneath you and the feel of the boat too, calls for sensing that rhythm. Riding and rowing has made me a stronger rower. A lot of kids I ride with are now joining their crew teams," she said.

On Thursday, Sept. 2 Ashleigh was packing for college and had a few seconds to answer questions, and wanted to be sure Amanda and June Kendricks knew how grateful she was. They loaned her Amanda's boat for the Nationals.

Ms. Tate's new title is a result of taking part in the recent U.S. Rowing Association events held this summer. Ashleigh left for the Nationals on July 19. The finals for the Nationals took place on July 24. There were from 20 to 25 events taking place that weekend. Forty-two national titles were awarded on the fifth and final day of competition at the 2004 U.S. Rowing National Championship Regatta at Eagle Creek Reservoir in Indianapolis, Ind. That's when Ashleigh won her title of U.S. Rowing National Junior Women's Single.

Ashleigh will major in international business at college, for which she credits her mother. "My mom has international clients, she imports and exports horses."

Her mom is very supportive of the idea of crewing. She said, "Every child who isn't into traditional sports should try crewing, at least for one year. It's a lot of hard work, but they will learn a great deal." She confirmed that Ashleigh is going to go for the gold, adding that it might be in four or in eight years.

Troy Smith is Ashleigh's main coach at SRA. She said, "He put up with me all during high school. He definitely has patience. I'm a 17-year-old teenager and dealing with teenagers can be tough. When you are the only one who cares and wants to practice it's hard. I pushed through even though I hated the team at the time." She said she wanted to quit, until she joined the summer nationals and got to row with other committed racers.

"The big reason that I'm so happy is that I had to put up with a lot from ninth grade until my junior year. I hated practice but I loved actually pushing a boat along in the water. But in the summer, rowing with the quad team was great."

She said it all came together for the girls. "This year, with Elizabeth Koenig, Caitlin Latham and Julie Solar in the quad and last summer with Hilary Armstrong things were great."

Hilary Armstrong was in a car accident just before the Nationals and couldn't compete. "We put a picture of her in front or our quad and raced for her," said Ashleigh.

"The race was done at the intermediate level because Liz (who attends the University of Rhode Island) and Caitlin (who attends University of New Hampshire) had racing experience at college. Julie is 16 and a senior at St. Anthony's High School and I'm 17 and graduated from Oyster Bay High School. Rowing at the Intermediate Level meant going against girls from 19 and over. They were much older than we. It was amazing we did as well as we did," she said.

Ashleigh is grateful for the help she's gotten from the Sagamore Rowing Association. "The people at Sagamore Rowing are super. I have to say thank you to them. They paid for me to go to the Youth Nationals in Ohio. Mrs. June Kendricks gave me money and the boat and I wouldn't have been able to do it without them."

("Thanks to the Kendricks for lending Amanda's Matrix single to Ashley for the event," added Coach Peter Bisek.)

Ashleigh has learned a great deal through her involvement and commitment to excellence in sports.

"Things happen at school, and at home and you have to put it aside. Rowing is an outlet," she said. "My cousins were supposed to be the Olympic stars, now my goal is to make the Olympics."

Rowing is turning out to be a good place for a girl to find the gold in the Olympics. "Now a lot of girls are thinking of making it in the quads," she said. "We just want to go! It's a realistic goal and we'll try out every year that we think we can make it. We believe it will happen."

She said the hardest thing to deal with at the Nationals was that "they expected me to win and I felt I was the underdog. I feel I'm the underdog and therefore I have to work 10 times harder - and they expected me to win! A person said, I was their big gun, and I never think that. I underestimate myself."

It is clear to see that Ashleigh uses her feelings of being an underdog to push her to work harder, which turns out to be her winning strategy.

Ashleigh doesn't have things served to her on a silver plate. "I'm a working student," she said. "My job at Pine Hollow Stables taught me respect for other people. Eddie Horowitz, a trainer and horse owner, is a good person. I learned a lot of lessons from him. One is that you can't be on the defensive, but have to suck it up. If I didn't learn I got pulled off the horse," she said.

Ashleigh feels she has a great thing going for her in combining rowing and riding. "I feel strongly if you are a rider and row you will be a better rower. You have to feel the motion of the horse to check that the stride isn't too big and you check on the boat to find that perfect ratio," she said.

The key to her enthusiasm is her passion for sports. "You have to love riding and crew to stick with it and do it," she said.

When the Sagamore Rowing Association was at the Nationals they put a picture of SRA rower Hilary Armstrong in the boat and dedicated their efforts to her. Hilary is one of the SRA athletes. During the summer she rowed for Friends Academy and was a member of their quad group. There are more than four girls on the team. Hilary missed the Nationals because of an accident.

In a telephone interview she said, "I had a bad car accident in Brooklyn and broke two vertebrae and had a collapsed lung and was in the hospital a month. What was most upsetting was missing Nationals." But she was cheered with the news: "I get to go rowing in a month and I'm going to St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia in January. Right now I need to be near my doctor," she said.

"I have two titanium vertebrae and a titanium rod in my back. I'm a bionic woman. It was really serious and I was in bed for a while and at one time they didn't think I would make it but now I have a complete and 100 percent recovery," she said with enthusiasm.

It meant a great deal to Hilary that the team put her picture in the front of their shell as inspiration during the Nationals. "We've been together, all four of us. They were all pretty distraught with the accident. I'm so proud of them, they did so well. I was thinking about them in the hospital.

"The worst part of the accident was not being with them at Nationals, but we'll do it next summer. We hung out together during the year and made time for each other," she said.

She was at the Nationals last year and they placed fourth. Now racing for them is at a higher level, she said, "They had to race at a college level."

Hilary writes very well and wrote an article about last year's Nationals that was published in the Oyster Bay Enterprise Pilot. She said she will keep writing, more as a hobby, but if it turns out that she has a book published someday, that will be great. In college she will be majoring in business, a subject that is always a great benefit in whatever career you chose.