East Lyme – And to think it could be so peaceful and pastoral, the water your endless companion, out there in a boat on the lake with your friends. It could be a Corona commercial.

And yet it is very much a grueling endeavor. Forever. And ever. Nothing else in sports is better than putting your quads, hamstrings, glutes, lats, core, shoulders, triceps, back and biceps into a sausage grinder.

Welcome to rowing.

And this just in: They do it really well in the People’s Republic of East Lyme.

Lest anyone think that championship week in high school sports is next week, here is a reminder that the girls’ varsity eight boat at East Lyme High has already won the 2016 Connecticut Public School championship, beating them all on Lake Waramaug in New Preston two weekends ago.

Take a bow, all those of you in the bow (and other parts of the boat): coxswain Bianca Barroga, stroke Julia Lefurge, Katie Long, Rasa Kirvelevicius, Alexa “Steve” Stewart, Gretchen Stelter, Allie Christensen, Lauren Alexandrescu and Kristina Fenton.

They even finished sixth overall in New England this past weekend, with nationals coming up after graduation. Some of them leave graduation night.

So now you know what they do, even if you have no idea what they do.

“Imagine putting running, swimming, basketball and football all into one sport and having to do that for long periods of time with seven other people when you’re feeling dead,” Fenton said, “and then an angry little person yelling at you.”

That would be Barroga, the feisty coxswain, who was so mad at her team once she started pulling grass from the ground after a race.

“When we tell people in school that we do, we hear things like ‘we must have broad shoulders,’” Christensen said. “And if you tell you people you row, they start singing ‘row, row, row your boat.’”

Ah, but life has been but a dream for them lately.

“The (championship) trophy goes home with a different kid every night,” Scott Mahon, the coach, was saying. “Pretty neat. One of the most painful sports you can do. Yet you look at the faces on the kids when they come off of race or a workout and as painful as it might have been, this is one of the places they’re the most happy. The community, camaraderie and the love that’s built up, even though they have to compete with each other to get a seat, we’re one whole unit.”

And those spring days when it’s 42 degrees, misty, wind whipping and all the other teams practicing inside? The girls are on the water.

“No matter how hard of a day you’re having, at the end of the day, you always feel accomplished,” Fenton said. “It’s a good feeling. I think that’s what keeps us from wanting to kill each other. We’re like ‘wow, we just did this as a team I couldn’t have done this without you.’ A bond you can’t describe.”

They chuckle when they hear the word “cult.” Hey, maybe it is. But if this life is about jamming all the positive experiences we can until time’s up, the crew at East Lyme is its own infomercial.

“And we have the best thighs in school,” one of them cracked.

“Once you get a taste of it, you either love or you hate it. And the love is obsession,” Mahon said.

East Lyme’s last title came in 2007. It didn’t necessarily look like this year would snap the streak for a while in the championship race. But then, nobody else in the state deals with what they do: a lake (Pattagansett) so small that they can only row for about five minutes at a time before having to stop and turn around. Translation: a pain in the ascot for training purposes. Other schools on bigger lakes row for 45 minutes.

Maybe it helps with the “overcoming adversity” thing, though.

“During the race I thought we were going to get third and then something happened,” Fenton said. “We got ahead of Simsbury and Glastonbury and we’re thinking ‘how did this happen?’”

Bottom line: It happened.

A victory for grind over glamor.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro