After 75 years at the same location, the Washington-Liberty High School crew program is leaving the only home it has known.
By the end of 2024, the program will move its operation from the Potomac Boat Club on Water Street in D.C. after three-quarters of a century to the Columbia Island Marina in the Pentagon lagoon near the interchange of the George Washington Memorial Parkway and Interstate 395 in Arlington.
The move became necessary in recent months, when the crowded Potomac Boat Club was expanding programs for its members. As a result, the W-L team was asked to reduce its footprint of about 100 team members, and yield some space the program uses at the club.
After the request, Washington-Liberty coaches and booster-club leaders began looking at other sites. The Columbia Island Marina was approached, showed immediate interest, and an arrangement was reached.
“We’ve been there since the inception of the program in 1949, and we do take up a lot of space,” Washington-Liberty crew boosters’ president Galen Requist said of Potomac Boat Club. “Our new site at Columbia Marina looks very promising, and we are very excited about this and happy about how things turned out.”
Washington-Liberty will be the first high-school crew program housed at the marina. The program will store its 13 boats on the site in a fenced area, and will set up operations on the southeast side of the boat yard.
“That area will be very convenient for them, and we have plenty of room,” said Matt McDaniel, the general manager at the Columbia Island Marina. “All of us here thought this is a wonderful idea to have a high-school program here. We want to increase our community footprint and add other programs. This is a great way of doing that.”
Requist and Washington-Liberty head crew coach Kara McPhillips said the plan is to complete the move by the end of February, about when the spring high-school crew season begins. Some different types of infrastructure will have to be built or bought, like boat racks and the expansion of a boat dock.
“It’s going to take work. But we will have all the space we need because we don’t want have to limit our number of team members,” Requist said.
McPhillips and the other W-L coaches asked marina officials if they might have an interest in hosting the program when they were having a casual conversation while getting gas at the facility for the crew’s vehicles.
“They said, ‘Why not?’ Columbia Island was really enthusiastic about having us,” McPhillips said. “This isn’t like finding a new basketball court. Our equipment doesn’t fit in a bag. It’s a unique situation. Columbia Island is a peaceful kind of secret area. And it’s in Arlington, and gives us room to grow the program. I hope we can be there another 75 years.”
