GREENE – The season begins at sunrise on a crisp September morn and ends in the unsettled, late-afternoon humidity of a holiday weekend in May. The only hints of glamor are the price tag of the equipment and the chance to bask in the sunshine and float across the Androscoggin River with a cluster of your best pals.

Bates College rowers toil in anonymity and inspire curiosity, to put it nicely. Or there is the Laura Hubbell translation.

“People think we’re kind of crazy,” said Hubbell, a senior from Yarmouth.

There’s a method to the madness and a splendid outlet for it, though.

Hubbell and 17 other Bates women will board a bus today bound for Cherry Hill, N.J., site of Friday and Saturday’s NCAA rowing championship regatta.

It’s the third consecutive trip to the Division III section of the showcase for the Bobcats, who finished third in 2007 and fifth last spring.

“Our expectation is to be competing for the top spot,” said Bates coach Peter Steenstra.

Each qualified team sends a varsity eight and junior varsity eight to the championship. Bates’ first group returned intact from ’08, including seniors Hubbell, Emily Chandler of North Yarmouth and captains Caitlin Murphy of Duxbury, Mass., and Nicole Ritchie of East Dummerston, Vt.

The varsity eight crossed the line second two weeks ago at the New England championship.

“We’re lucky enough to be in one of the most competitive regions,” said Ritchie, named All-American in both her sophomore and junior seasons. “(Winning is) definitely a possibility. I think we learned last year this race really could be anyone’s. It’s whatever you bring to that regatta that day.”

No offseason

Rowing resides beneath gymnastics, swimming, diving and track on that roster of sports that garners its greatest exposure two or three days each Olympic year.

So perhaps it’s appropriate that one of the most successful teams in Bates’ athletic program rehearses and hones its craft without frills, electricity or plumbing.

Its boathouse, the length of a trailer with the roof height of a barn, rests on donated land seven miles from campus at the end of a winding, half-mile, dirt driveway. Visitors are greeted by a rack of sleek, purpose-built, white boats along each wall.

“With the oars, (a new boat) is about $35,000,” Steenstra said. “Better than a nice car.”

And your mileage may vary, directly proportional to the commitment of your team. Bates never falls shy in that department.

Steenstra organizes one practice per day during autumn and two workouts, six days a week, at the height of the spring schedule. Bates’ rowers otherwise are on their own, with an intrinsic drive and the inherent inter-dependence of the sport to keep them honest.

“The speech I give them every year is, ‘Either you’re always an athlete, or you’re not an athlete.’ Basketball is something where a really talented person can take a month off and not touch a basketball, not run, not train, especially at the level Bates is at, and they can still hop on the floor on the day of competition and contribute and maybe even be the winning factor,” said the coach. “In rowing, that’s not the case. You can be the strongest kid out there, but if you aren’t training constantly, you’re going to end up being an anchor.”

Last year’s trip to California for NCAAs supplied ample motivation on the water and off.

Fifth, though punctuated by a win in the ‘petit,’ or consolation final, was considered a disappointment. One member of the varsity eight became violently ill while traveling and struggled with dehydration and weight loss. Another sustained a shoulder injury just before the trip.

“These women are willing to put in all the extra work. It’s one of the most personally dedicated teams I’ve ever seen,” said sophomore coxswain Nora Collins of Kensington, Md. “That’s what sets them apart. We don’t have coaches in the winter, being a Division III team. They’ve done an incredible job of holding themselves to a high standard.”

Minutes to learn, years to master

Collins wears a microphone, faces the two-kilometer course and directs her eight’s syncopated movement across it.

She has competed since her freshman year of high school, which puts Collins in company with approximately half her teammates. Most states’ public schools, including Maine’s, don’t offer rowing as an co-curricular activity.

“A lot of people begin rowing in college. It’s a great sport in that way,” said Ritchie, who rowed in high school. “You can start when you get here and really contribute a lot to your team.”

Hubbell and Josie Cutts, a junior from Kittery Point and graduate of Traip Academy, weren’t drawn to the sport until arriving at Bates.

Cutts elected to concentrate on academics before joining the team her sophomore year.

“My grandfather rowed, and I’ve always had an interest in it. I wanted to get my feet underneath me my first year,” Cutts said. “Then I was hooked. You get to play in boats with your friends, all day every day. You get to push yourself physically. It’s quite the ride.”

Steenstra, who took over the program full-time this season after serving as assistant and interim coach, said the sport is easy to teach. Mastery, on the other hand, is up to the student.

“It’s basic coordination. It’s can you throw a ball? Can you hit a golf ball? It’s not even a matter of hand-eye coordination to catch something or chase something. It’s movement coordination,” he said. “You can get a basic rowing technique and be able to carry it for years. The key is staying with it.

“You also have to enjoy the people, or at least have a good level of tolerance, because you’re literally tied together. There are plenty of crews that had people that didn’t get along, but at some point it comes to confrontation and gets cleared up, or the whole thing crumbles.”

The Bobcats unanimously cite no lack of camaraderie.

Even the in-house competition – the results of winter ergonomic evaluations and endurance tests are posted at each practice, for example – is friendly.

“You’re always keeping perspective, because it’s really different than a lot of the other team sports,” Hubbell said. “You’re working so hard year-round that you have to keep your eye on the big picture.”

No place like home

It all comes into focus this weekend, on a course Bates was lucky enough to see earlier this month when it traveled to New Jersey for a different regional competition.

Training on the Androscoggin – keep in mind the adage about Maine weather: “Don’t like it? Wait five minutes.” – is an advantage on anyone else’s water.

“We’ve had a lot of practice training in tailwinds and headwinds and different currents,” Murphy said. “We go into almost every race confident that no matter what happens, we’ve probably experienced it at some point before.”

Murphy added that the competition can be at its most intimidating when spotted outside the boat. All three NCAA divisions hold their championships at the same site. Larger schools, Murphy noted, recruit athletes from other sports who are a foot taller and more muscular than the leaner Bobcats.

Bates compensates with its continuity.

“This is an absolutely incredible team,” Collins said. “We’re very lucky that from last year we’ve only had a few lineup changes. We didn’t graduate anybody from our varsity eight.”

The Bobcats’ goal is to win their qualifying race Friday morning, avoid an elimination round and advance directly to the Saturday finals.

Either way, it will be a busy, emotional weekend for Murphy, Ritchie, Hubbell and Chandler. They’ll be back in time for Sunday’s graduation ceremony at 10 a.m.

“They’ve been there. They know what to expect as far as the pressures involved,” Steenstra said. “All the pistons are firing. Everybody’s ready to compete.”

“We’re so close. We’re within seconds of the first-place crew,” said Hubbell. “It’s in sight.”

In a sport where so much is done in secret and without instant gratification, there’s something to be said for that.