Giddens gets 'home court'

Olympic hopeful returns to where it all started -- East Race

By STEVE WOZNIAK
Tribune Staff Writer

During her high school years, South Bend was Rebecca Giddens' "home away from home."

The then-diminutive kayaker would drive 5 1/2 hours from her home in Green Bay, Wis., every weekend to cut her teeth on the fast-flowing whitewater of South Bend's East Race.

Almost a decade later, Giddens, now 26, is back in South Bend for the U.S. Olympic Trials, and next weekend, the 2002 World Cup gold medalist hopes those same waters on which she learned to paddle will carry her to the Olympics in Athens, Greece later this year.

"It's homey to me. You spend every weekend from eighth grade through high school here, it becomes familiar," said Giddens, who is an overwhelming favorite to represent the United States in women's whitewater slalom kayak at the summer Olympiad.

Giddens began paddling with her family in canoes on flat water at a young age. But watching her older brother Todd compete at the Junior Team Trials turned her on to whitewater at age 12.

A few years later, she was going to training camps held at the East Race. Training camps quickly turned into weekly jaunts on the East Race for Giddens.

"For the early part, my mom would bring me down one weekend, then my dad would bring me down. When I got my license, they just packed me in the car and sent me on my way," she recalled.

While in South Bend, Giddens stayed with self-professed "kayak bum" Rich Dressen, who at the time was an unofficial caretaker of the East Race. Here she also trained with Josh Russell and Scott Parsons, who himself went on to become a star of men's kayak, under the tutelage of Parsons' father, Bill, and Russell's father Wayne.

Dressen, who has since moved to Utah to take up his other loves of cross-country and downhill skiing, has not forgotten.

"I remember Rebecca being extremely dedicated," said Dressen. "It'd be 19 degrees out and a snowstorm, and she'd drag me out to paddle with her when I didn't want to go.

"She was the hardest worker. She'd go out in the worst weather, when 99 percent of people wouldn't even think about it."

Through that all, the group became very close.

"Me, Rebecca, Scott, Josh -- the four of us grew up together on the East Race," recalled Dressen.

When Giddens finished high school a semester early in Dec. 1995, she left behind her weekends in South Bend, instead heading to Georgia State, where she could join other top-notch paddlers training on the nearby Chattahoochee River.

Giddens never considered going to Notre Dame so she could still train on the East Race.

"For year-round training -- and in slalom, you train year-round -- it's just too cold here," Giddens said.

But it had nothing to do with the East Race itself.

"It's Olympic quality. It's World Cup quality," she said of South Bend's whitewater course. "The only thing is the winters are too cold here."

Giddens' continued drive took her to greatness in the following years.

She scored her first big victory in 1997 at, of course, the East Race in that year's U.S. Team Trials. In 1999, she won the National Championships in Wausau, Wis., just a short drive from her childhood home.

In 2000, Giddens hit her stride, winning the Olympic Trials, the National Championships and the World Cup. It was all enough to qualify Giddens for a trip to Sydney, Aus., where she finished seventh in the Olympic games.

After grabbing another World Cup title in 2002, Giddens had become a veteran champ and the premier women kayaker in the country. With that success came more composure in the pressure of championship racing.

"I used to be visiting the bathroom a lot before races. It makes you miserable being that nervous," said Giddens. "I've been able now to step back and sort of appreciate the sport."

Such a copasetic attitude may also be the result of a marriage made in paddling heaven.

Rebecca (then Bennett) met Eric Giddens, himself a champion kayaker, at a training camp in Wausau, Wis., in 1994. The two have been almost inseparable in their training since, even while now living near the placid waters of San Diego, where Eric is finishing up work on his doctorate of oceanography.

"It's amazing. Most paddlers live in Atlanta or up near (Washington) D.C., or in North Carolina. We're the only ones out in California, but we've managed to make it work," said Rebecca.

The couple work out at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in nearby Chula Vista, Calif., and often make treks up to the Kern River in the Sierra Mountains to train on whitewater courses.

But despite all her globe-hopping to pursue her love of whitewater, Giddens will never forget her South Bend roots.

"This place has always been kind of a home away from home for me," she said.