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Front to back, Chris Sekerak, Alex Marett, George Hildebrandt and Brian Mingus row a four-man shell down the Cuyahoga. Coxswain Chase Bartsche is low in the front of the boat.

(Michael K. McIntyre/PD)

The high school rowers, powering down the calm Cuyahoga as the sun emerges from slumber to illuminate the city skyline, sometimes glide so smoothly and so fast toward the mouth of the river that it feels as though they might never stop.

"Sometimes we're out training in the morning and you leave the river and go out to the lake and it's like glass out there and you say: Man this is one of those days where we could just keep on going. We could make it to Canada. It's not that far," said Matt Previts, director of rowing at St. Edward High School.

So that became the running joke. Is today the day we cross Lake Erie?

As the school year wound down, it wasn't a joke any more. It was a mission.

Code name: Operation Maple Bacon.

Serious training for a 50-plus-mile lake crossing was underway. The date is set. The route is planned. The students won't be rowing to Canada, they'll be rowing back.

"To a man, everyone on the team said, 'Yeah, we want to do this,'" said Previts.

In the process they hope to raise boatloads of money for cancer research and for the work of Case Western Reserve University's International Center for Autism Research and Education. Each of the 18 students involved is seeking sponsors and the team hopes to earn $5,000 per boat, known is rowing as a shell, for charity.

Two eight-man shells will push off from Laverne Kelly Memorial Park in Erieau, Ontario, Canada (the rowers will be ferried there by motor boat) and will row the 53-miles across Lake Erie to Cleveland, landing at the Cleveland Rowing Foundation Boat House on the Cuyahoga River.

The trip is expected to take seven to nine hours. Final details are being worked out with the U.S. Coast Guard. Three power vessels, including a 58-foot craft, will accompany the rowers and there will be an alternate rower and coxswain for each boat.

"We wanted to make sure first and foremost that we could do this safety. We will have very good eyes on these two boats as they make the trip across," he said.

Weather will have to be perfect for a 10 hour window either on Aug. 14 or 15. If it's not, they'll row the on machines, which won't be the same, but will at least deliver on the mileage. If they know in advance that weather for the whole weekend will be lousy, Previts said, they'll do the miles up and down the Cuyahoga.

"Either way, we're going to knock out the distance," he said.

The students have trained six days a week this summer for the event, with some training twice a day. In two weeks, they'll practice on Lake Dillon near Zanesville.

Coach Matt Carlsen stays close to offer advice and encouragement as St. Edward rowers train for their lake crossing.

Friday morning, Matt Carlsen, the head varsity coach of St. Edward Rowing, motored behind a four-man shell for a training run in the Cuyahoga.

"Build it up over five and build it to a 30-31," he says to Junior Chase Bartsche, the coxswain, which is the job Carlsen did when he went to St. Ignatius and crewed on a club team at Miami of Ohio. He turned his attention to the four students ready to row: Juniors Alex Marett and Chris Sekerak and sophomores Brian Mingus and George Hildebrandt. "Hold the legs. Feel the run!"

"We've been preparing for the mental challenge. Focus, determination, all kinds of stuff like that," said Marett. "I think we'll be ready for it."

Sekerak talked about the physical and mental challenge, as well as the emotional part of raising money for cancer and autism research.

St. Edward was touched intimately by the scourge of cancer last school year when 9-year-old Michael "Big Mike" Orbany, younger brother of senior Matt Orbany, died after battling brain and spinal cancer since 2010.

And Sekerak knows intimately the struggles of autism. His younger brother, Greg, has autism.

"A lot of people are unsure what it is and it is good that we're raising awareness because it affects a lot of people," Sekerak said.

As for the lake crossing itself, he's confident, but pragmatic.

"I'm pretty sure we'll be fine," he said. "If not, that's what the Coast Guard is there for."