Oakland Strokes

The Oakland Strokes was founded in 1974 by Ed Lickiss. A former oarsman at the University of California, Berkeley, Ed won the Pacific Coast Sculling Championship three years in a row and was chosen to represent the United States at the 1940 Olympic Games. Due to the outbreak of World War II, the games were cancelled and Ed joined the Army Air Corps as a P-38 pilot instead.

After the war Ed returned to Oakland and became a local electrical contractor. He founded the Lake Merritt Rowing Club in 1960, and established a program of crew for high school students. Historically, rowing had been a men's sport. Believing that women would also enjoy crew, Ed began training young women and, with Joanna Iverson and Ted Nash, founded the National Women's Rowing Association in 1964. Today the USRA honors him with the annual Edwin E. Lickiss Trophy for the Lightweight Women's Four Championship.

Ed envisioned crew as a sport that could provide young athletes with both excellent physical training and the confidence to succeed in life's most challenging endeavors. To provide a framework for that vision, he incorporated the Strokes as a California nonprofit corporation and it became chartered as Explorer Post 8 and 9 of the Boy Scouts of America, Piedmont Council.

On Ed's death in 1985, a group of his family and friends joined together to keep alive his dedication to rowing. Today, the Oakland Strokes is operated by a board of directors that include former coaches and rowers and the parents of former rowers and current rowers. The board sets the policies and carries out the responsibilities of the rowing program.

The Director of Women's Rowing is Allison Ray. The Director of Men's Rowing is Jovan Jovanovic.

The Executive Director is Cornell alum Dana Hooper.[1]

• Oakland Strokes
• Youth Nationals