Comments from the CCAA Chair

First of all, thank you for being a part of Cougar Crew. Many of you are dear to me from my years on the team. Every year I meet more of you from across the decades and the nation. It is an honor and a privilege to volunteer alongside so many of you in support of our current student athletes and this wonderful program.

Like most of you, I am passionate about rowing, Cougar Crew and WSU. And that is why I deeply appreciate everyone that supports this team. Special thanks to Tim “Haole” Richards, founding Chair of the Cougar Crew Alumni Association (CCAA), now stepping back after 17 years of exemplary leadership. Tim’s contributions and dedication to CCAA and Cougar Crew are immense. We look forward to his continued involvement as an advisor to the Board.

Big thanks also to athletes and coaches, CCAA board members, volunteer organizers, alumni, UREC, parents and other supporters. By helping get CCAA firmly established, all of you have earned our gratitude and recognition. Thanks to the Board’s financial planning, development work and pursuit of planned giving, Cougar Crew is building on its traditional revenue sources (team dues and fundraising) with a broader income from endowment interest and regular alumni support that is laying the solid foundation we have all dreamed of.

Athlete hours formerly spent fundraising will be better spent training, studying, or engaging in other campus activities. It’s no surprise that when athlete expenses and fundraising demands are reduced and safety and support are increased, we see improvement in recruiting, retention, and results.

Building the Base

We recently concluded our “Celebration of 50 Years of Rowing on the Snake,” a project we began work on in 2019. Due to the pandemic, 2020 and 2021 saw virtual-only meetups. In 2022 and 2023, we returned to in-person reunions and saw record-breaking results. Total fundraising over four years approached a halfmillion dollars, despite the chronic chaos of the public health crisis. As our founders (many of them present at this year’s event) reminded us, Covid-19 is only the latest in the list of challenging obstacles overcome by Cougar Crew. Once again, we have prevailed and flourished. We have a proud legacy to cherish and a strong program to steward into the next 50 years and beyond.

On the alumni side, CCAA will focus on reconnection and communication. We want to create more opportunities for active engagement—between alumni, athletes, parents and supporters, and we want to increase overall awareness of Cougar Crew. The attendance rate for Cougar Crew Days in 2022 and 2023, around 300 guests, is sustainable, as we now have nearly 3,000 alum- ni. Some will come to Pullman every year. Many more will come every few years. With a bit of teamwork, we will continue to grow attendance. Reach out to your boatmates and make plans—you won’t regret it. One attendee returning for the first time in many years said they felt like they’d been given back their friends. It’s a great feeling and it’s not unusual. Additionally, we will be organizing informal west-side regatta meetups and possibly even in-person watch-parties for more distant away regattas.

Building the Team

On the team side, we will continue supporting athletes and coaches in their pursuit of excellence, specifically by helping them pursue their stated goal of winning the ACRA overall team points trophy. That’s right—not just a national championship boat, they want to build a national champion caliber team. Clearly ambitious, but the strategic plan drafted over the past two years by officers, coaches and alumni identifies the challenges to be overcome. A fresh recruiting and retention strategy was deployed last fall. That plan included outreach to Junior-level rowing programs, high school athletic departments, new-student orientations, peer-topeer networking, on-campus activities, targeted social media marketing, and more.

The strategy is yielding results, as evidenced by improved fall turnout and spring retention. Obstacles to retention, including dues and no-training fundraising days, are being addressed with alumni help. Since CCD 2022, specifically-targeted CCAA assistance has eliminated two fund-raising days and provided chartered buses to regattas. To help meet the requirements of a growing roster, some of the proceeds of CCD 2023 will underwrite the salary for our first-ever full-time paid Assistant Coach.

Head Coach Peter Brevick said recently “I am truly privileged to be standing on the shoulders of giants.” I share Peter’s gratitude. In my years as a coxswain (at WSU and elsewhere), I have often felt that way. It is a privilege that demands responsibility. Mutual responsibility is the glue binding every successful team in its pursuit of a common objective.

I am honored to have been chosen CCAA Board Chair, and excited to be following in Tim Richards’s footsteps. Tim has built the CCAA into a very solid team. I view my responsibility as Chair as analogous to that of a coxswain: organizer, coordinator, communicator. I’m not here to reinvent the rowing stroke. I’m here to keep us together, implement the race plan, help everyone make the most of every stroke and continue (incrementally, steadily) building boat speed.

So thank you for your trust and thank you for asking me to serve you and this program. Let’s get to work!

—Andi Day (90)