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APRIL 2025 | VOLUME 32 NUMBER 03

CONTENTS

FE AT URES

30 There’s an App for That How the best crews are using new in-boat technology to win.

BY CHIP DAVIS

40 Too Big, Too Crowded, Too Clubby?

Over 4,000 youth athletes from more than 200 rowing programs are expected to compete for 2025 USRowing Youth National Championship titles as super-clubs continue to dominate.

BY CHIP DAVIS

R O W INGNE W S .C OM

PHOTOS: TOP: COURTESY NK; BOTTOM: LISA WORTHY.

Follow Rowing News on social media by scanning this QR code with your smart phone.

DEPA R T MEN T S

21 QUICK CATCHES News

World Rownig adds mixed eight, cuts repechages, lightweight pairs and quads, U23 and U19 coxed fours.

57 TRAINING

Sports Science The Gyroscope Fantasy Coxing Ready for Anything Recruiting Navigating the Recruiting Process Fuel Nancy Clark Training Marlene Royle

Coach Development Madeline Davis Tully 14 66

From the Editor Doctor Rowing

ON THE COVER: U.S. Olympic sculler Jacob Plihal. | Photo: Phillip E. Belena.

APRIL 2025

11

FROM THE EDITOR CHIP DAVIS

Too Much of a Good Thing?

I

The regatta is one of the great accomplishments of our sport’s national governing body.

Our editorial team can be reached at editor@rowingnews.com 14

APRIL 2025

PHOTO: LISA WORTHY.

n mid-June, the 2025 USRowing Youth National Championships

once again will draw over 4,000 American junior rowers to the best regatta venue in the world for four days of eight-across buoyed-lane racing in Sarasota.

Now in its 30th year, the regatta is one of the great accomplishments of our sport’s national governing body: an assemblage of the best junior crews racing for the acknowledged national championship.

It wasn’t always like this. Until a group of hardworking, forwardthinking junior coaches and supporters launched the original version of Youth Nationals in Cincinnati in the 1990s, there was no recognized national championship.

The title was used erroneously by other regattas, individual crews claimed to be national champions, and the American winners of the Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta were seemingly the best, but there was no championship regatta widely deemed legitimate. Now, we have such an event in abundance— perhaps too much so.

The removal of junior lightweight events for safety and convenience has been facilitated by the addition of second-varsity events, and the addition of U15, U16, and U17 events to the standard U19 ones has expanded the regatta to a size that only Nathan Benderson Park can host safely and effectively.

The quality of both the park’s and USRowing’s organization and presentation led SportsTravel magazine to name the youth national championships 2023’s best amateur sports event.

But should our sport be crowning a national champion in age categories younger than juniors (U19)? Can a second varsity really be a “national champion” when it’s not even the fastest boat in its own boathouse? Read our youth preview feature beginnintg on page 40 and decide for yourself.

For decades, the United States has had the most and best university crews, backed by an active and affluent community of families, alumni, and institutions. But until Casey Galvanek and Michael Callahan used just the right amount of new data-measuring technology to shape two men’s crews into Olympic medal winners in Paris, it had been a while—eight long years—since the U.S. had won hardware at the Games. Meanwhile, the senior World Rowing Championship gold-medal drought that began in 2019 continues.

As explored in our feature story beginning on page 30, each of the current four collegiate varsity national champion crews also uses new technology to train and improve the best crews. But they’ve learned to sift through what can be “an avalanche of data” and they haven’t abandoned their respect for the feel, instinct, and wisdom earned through experience.

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LETTERS Letters to the Editor can be sent to editor@rowingnews.com

Sizable Expense I always read “Doctor Rowing” first upon receiving my Rowing News. The February column touched on a topic that I have been very interested in over the decades. There are a couple of points I would add to this thoughtful piece.

Staffing by referees:

Being a USRowing referee, I received an email a few weeks ago stating, “If you referee at a non-USRowing-registered event, USRowing insurance will not cover you.

As part of working a non-registered event, you are not allowed to wear the USRowing referee emblem. Standard USRowing gear is fine, but the USRowing referee logo can be worn only at USRowing registered events.”

Regatta insurance, waivers and referees:

In my work with the Midwest Scholastic Rowing Association, one reason our championship became a USRowingregistered regatta was the provision of

insurance. While being a registered regatta would not ensure we could get an adequate number of referees at our event, not being a registered regatta, we thought, would make staffing our referee needs more difficult.

Though the private secondary school that I coached at was covered by the school’s insurance, like all other varsity sports and activities, USRowing wanted us to purchase insurance, or at least send proof of insurance.

The additional requirements you cite, including coaching certification, on top of individual membership fees, are a sizable expense for sponsored rowing programs at schools and colleges.

In the old days, your USRowing (NAAO) membership got you a membership card, a sticker, and a subscription to The Oarsman, and still people asked, “What am I getting for my membership dues?”

Thank you for calling attention to a serious issue.

Moved to Tears I pulled the latest Rowing News out of my mailbox this morning and almost fell over when I saw one of my closest friends from Dartmouth on the cover. I was there in 2002, the year before the doc was filmed, and rowed with all these guys. I was in tears reading the article.

Besides my parents, Scott Armstrong had the single greatest effect on my personal development, and I was so glad that Will Scoggins got his due as a brilliant coach and shaper of men. Thanks for this. Means so much to hear my experience validated, celebrated, and seen as unique as I always felt it was.

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APRIL 2025

Olympic Medals to Pocock Foundation Conn Findlay, who died in 2021 at the age of 90, won four Olympic medals—three in rowing and a fourth in sailing. At his bequest, the rowing medals were recently donated to the George Pocock Rowing Foundation in Seattle, “in honor of George Y Pocock and Stanley R Pocock whose coaching, guidance, and friendship of Conn Findlay from 1956 to 1964 contributed to his success and enjoyment of rowing”.

See story, page 21.

PHOTO: COURTESY GEORGE POCOCK ROWING FOUNDATION

APRIL 2025

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C O A C H I N G C H A N G E S | R E G AT TA S | AWA R D S

QUICK CATCHES

From left: Honorary FISA President Denis Oswald, Vice President Tricia Smith, President Jean-Christophe Rolland, and Executive Director Vincent Galliard.

BIG NE WS

New World Order

World Rowing launches a mixed eight event while cutting coxed fours, lightweight pairs and quads, and repechages.

G

PHOTO: MAURICE SUMMERS/WORLD ROWING.

et ready for the mixed eight at

the LA2028 Olympics, if the International Olympic Committee approves World Rowing’s latest attempt to reverse the slide in interest and finances of international rowing.

And say goodbye to repechages and the lightweight pairs and quads at senior World Rowing Championships, and coxed fours at U23 and U19 Worlds.

Those changes, plus rewriting its rules to restrict women’s events to those born female and open men’s events to all, emerged from World Rowing’s 2025 Quadrennial Congress in Lausanne,

Switzerland, in mid-March.

The mixed-eight event for elite international competition will make its debut at the 2025 World Rowing Championships in September outside Shanghai after test runs at the two World Rowing Cups in Varese, Italy, and Lucerne, Switzerland, both in June. The World Rowing Cups have been reduced from three to two this year because of declining popularity, broadcast support, and sponsorship.

The Quadrennial Congress rewrote Rule 13, regarding eligibility to compete in men’s and CONTINUES ON PAGE 22 >>>

Findlay Donates Medals to Pocock Rowing Foundation Conn Findlay, who won four Olympic medals—three in rowing and a fourth in sailing—directed his estate to donate his rowing medals to the George Pocock Rowing Foundation in Seattle in honor of George Pocock and his son, Stan Pocock. Findlay, who won gold in the coxed pair at both the 1956 Melbourne and 1964 Tokyo Games, won bronze in the same boat at the 1960 Rome Games. He died in 2021 at the age 90, and the medals were presented in March.

APRIL 2025

21

Back Issues are available online

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The U.S. men’s U23 coxed four won gold in St. Catharines at the 2024 World Rowing Under 23 Championships, one of five medals won by U.S. crews last year in events now canceled by World Rowing.

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BIG NE WS >>> women’s events, to read: “World Rowing will maintain two separate sex categories for rowing events: Women, for rowers who are eligible under this Rule to compete in a women’s event, and men, for rowers who are not eligible to compete in a women’s event. This shall be an open category.”

Men’s and women’s lightweight pair and quad events were eliminated from the senior World Rowing Championship program following years of small fields. By the same rationale, coxed fours have been scrapped from U19 and U23 World Rowing Championships, as were men’s and women’s Para PR2 single-scull and PR3 pair events.

Repechage, or “second chance” heats, a unique quirk of international rowing, have also been jettisoned by the Quadrennial Congress. Now, the top two boats from each heat will advance to the next round,

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APRIL 2025

with next-fastest times filling out remaining spots in the next rounds.

Previously, crews that failed to advance from heats got a second chance in the repechage, while advancers rested for the next round. World Rowing’s strategic review of a combined 6,867 crews racing in the U19, U23, and senior World Rowing Championships over the past 10 years revealed that 94 percent of the same crews would have advanced under the new system as did with repechages.

World Rowing attributed about half the six-percent difference to “strategic rowing,” and competitors “not putting in full effort in their heats.” No explanation was given for the remaining three percent.

“These changes represent a significant evolution in classic rowing,” said JeanChristophe Rolland, World Rowing president.

CONTINUES ON PAGE 24 >>>

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QUICK CATCHES BIG NE WS >>> “By updating the

progression system and introducing a mixed-eight event, we are ensuring that our sport remains relevant and competitive, while also making it more exciting and

than men’s and women’s eights. Nor was grassroots or popular demand cited.

Currently, no major rowing regatta, from the junior to the international level, features a mixed-eight event.

“Let’s wait until April 9 for the IOC to confirm the program,” said U.S. Olympic boss Josy Verdonkschot, “but I think mixed eights would be a great addition.”

“As for elimination of reps, [it’s] not my preferred solution. But it is what it is. Especially for U19 and U23, it could have undesired effects, since there is no valid seeding for heats.”

Since Vincent Gaillard was appointed executive director three years ago, World Rowing has been open about the

“These changes represent a significant evolution in classic rowing,”

— Jean-Christophe Rolland accessible to fans around the world.”

World Rowing offered no proof that mixed-eight events are more exciting, accessible, relevant, or competitive

organization’s financial challenges and the decline in broadcast, sponsor, spectator, and competitor interest in its regattas, which take place almost exclusively in continental Europe. During the same period, other major regattas around the world—from Australia’s national championships to Henley Royal Regatta to the San Diego Crew Classic—have been attracting record fields.

At the Quadrennial Congress, World Rowing officials projected an operating loss in Swiss francs equal to about $285,000 because of inflation and the rising costs of supporting elite-level rowing (including information technology, doping controls, Para classification) and holding more events (Para, Beach Sprints, indoor erg races).

Simultaneously, World Rowing’s traditional revenue sources of sponsorships and broadcast rights have declined.

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elgium’s Ward Lemmelijn won the

men’s 2,000-meter final in 5:39.2, and Elizabeth Gilmore of the U.S. won the women’s in 6:46.4 at the World Rowing Indoor Championships, presented by Concept2 Held across two weekends in February, this year’s entirely virtual event was staged

by World Rowing as the international governing body seeks to increase engagement and reverse the slide of interest and participation in World Rowing events.

This year’s contest drew 1,738 individual entries, the highest number yet for a fully virtual event, World Rowing reported. Last year’s hybrid event in Prague, which included both in-person and virtual competitors, drew over 2,000. The highwater mark for World Rowing Indoor Championships came in 2020 in Paris, when more than 2,300 competed.

Twenty years ago, in 2005, when the C.R.A.S.H.-B. Sprints used the “World Indoor Championship” title, the event drew 1,932 entries to Boston. Belarus’s Pavel Shurmei won the men’s title in 5:43.2, and New Zealand’s Evers-Swindell twins, Georgina (6:33.2) and Caroline (6:40.2), went one-two in the women’s final.

APRIL 2025

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COL L EGE

Texas Announces 68 Rowing Scholarships

U

niversity of Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte recently announced plans to increase the number of scholarships Texas offers in rowing to 68, up from 20.

“This is the University of Texas,” Del Conte said at his annual town hall meeting.

“We’re good at everything. We are going to fully fund every single one of our sports.”

“Sixty-eight scholarships is certainly an eye-popping number, and our athletic director has clearly stated a goal of increasing scholarships across all sports at Texas,” said Dave O’Neill, head coach of the defending NCAA national champion Longhorns. “This will be a multi-year process. Like all athletic departments, our budget office is working hard to figure out how to handle the new world of collegiate athletics, and next year’s funding for athlete support will be largely the same as this year.

Fingers crossed for the years ahead.”

The Austin American Statesmen reported that Del Conte has a three-year plan for his athletic department to bring in $13 million in new revenue while reducing costs by $6 million. Season tickets for football will go up $80. Total scholarships for Texas’ 19 sports will increase from 266.2 to 466.

“That’s insane,” exclaimed one women’s college rowing coach, off the record.

What, exactly, constitutes a scholarship can vary widely.

At the high end, it can include tuition, books, room and board, additional cost of attendance, and Alston awards—up to $5,980 in additional funding, named after Shawne Alston, the football player who successfully sued the NCAA for violating antitrust law.

At the low end, a scholarship might only cover in-state tuition for residents at a public university.

“I’m confident everything will be done and our team will be supported to keep us competing for national championships year after year,” said O’Neill.

APRIL 2025

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SRowing has joined four other national governing bodies (NGBs) in the United Sports Collective to pool commercial rights as they seek sponsors, rowing’s NGB announced in early March.

The NGBs of fencing, cycling, sailing, squash, and rowing represent “approximately 350,000 diverse families,” the press release states.

“We’re excited to work alongside these innovative national governing bodies to form the United Sports Collective,” said USRowing CEO Amanda Kraus. “This collaboration among flourishing sports organizations will create a commercially attractive offering for partners seeking the opportunity to activate their brands across a vast community of sports families in the U.S.” Mead Point Capital, founded in January by Stephanie Borges and based in Greenwich, Conn., will represent the United Sport Collective. Borges played squash and tennis at St. Lawrence University and owns the Greenwich Panthers of the National Squash League.

For over 15 years, she worked with major brands selling and servicing sponsorships for Six Flags Entertainment.

“You can do more things together than you can individually,” Borges told Rowing News.

NGBs of niche sports are challenged by relatively small membership numbers, she said, but can be stronger together, especially in the lead-up to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

“It’s a great story, and helps conversations,” Borges said.

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Call for 2025 entries: Annual Photography Issue Email your best rowing images to photos@rowingnews.com for a chance to be published.

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THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT HOW THE BEST CREWS ARE USING NEW IN-BOAT TECHNOLOGY TO WIN STORY BY CHIP DAVIS PHOTOS COURTESY OF SUPPLIERS

S

hortly after the U.S. men’s four won gold at the Paris Olympics, coach Casey Galvanek was asked, “What made the difference, what was special about this crew?”

His reply: “Hip mobility.”

Galvanek, like other recent winning coaches, utilized new technology and data analysis to teach improvements to what was already a world-class crew—and to sell the oarsmen on the changes he was asking them to make.

The crew of Nick Mead, Justin Best, Michael Grady, and Liam Corrigan had won silver already at the 2023 World Rowing Championships and earned a place in the Olympic regatta (since 1996, competing nations have had to qualify for each of the 14, now 12, Olympic events).

They were one of the best U.S. fours ever,

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and favorites for a medal in Paris.

But to make the step to winning the Olympics, they needed to be even better.

Small adjustments, some smaller than could be perceived by the human eye, produced the extra speed that won gold.

Galvanek and his fellow Olympic coaches used innovative in-boat measuring technology, video, and other digital-age tools to make the U.S. men’s four and eight into Olympic medalists. Electronics like Active Tool’s ActiveSpeed, NK’s SpeedCoach, NK’s EmPower oarlock, Peach Innovations’ PowerLine system, SmartOar, and XBoat provide rowing coaches the data to improve performance and win championships.

The Peach system uses a proprietary oarlock incorporating precision sensors in place of the standard Concept2 oarlock to

APRIL 2025

31

measure forces and angles applied to the pin to calculate power curves through the stroke, catch angle, finish angle, timing, and handle path. Combined with information from motion sensors collecting data from hull-mounted impellers, these systems can measure minute changes in practically everything a rower does and correlated changes in boat speed, acceleration, and check.

What the Peach system can show with its precision accelerometer is that boat speed actually increases, significantly, after the release when, instead of sitting on the back of the seat at the finish, rowers shift their body weight to the front of the seat (toward the stern), which moves the shell forward as they initiate the recovery. The Peach system enables the coach to show an athlete, empirically, how rotating his pelvis forward and up, instead of just sitting at the finish and initiating the recovery with hands away, makes the boat go its fastest.

Doing that takes hip mobility.

Precise in-boat measuring technology, combined with video review and cuttingedge coaching, improved the Olympicchampion four’s catch as well.

In NBC’s broadcast of the Paris final, there’s a shot of the bows of the U.S.

speed as easy as possible. So we focused on that.”

Coordinating the technique of each member of a crew so all row as one can be a coach’s greatest challenge—and make the greatest crew. There again, precision measuring technology, combined with video and coaching, yields today’s best crews.

While coaching the U.S. National Team men’s eight, Michael Callahan used his Peach system from the University of Washington to refine and unify the technique of the crew selected by Galvanek.

He knew that how they came out of bow at the release could make the boat faster. He also fine-tuned their approach to the catch, telling them, “You’re going to have to beat the other crews on the recovery as well as the drive.”

The eight oarsmen in the Olympic eight ranged from 6-foot-1 to 6-foot-6 in height, with at least as much variation in limb length and power application. Some got their heels down at the catch, one drove off the balls of his feet through the whole stroke, and another got his heels down halfway through the drive.

Using foot-stretcher pressure-sensor data and power-curve measurements, Callahan could show the heels-downhalfway rower how his power dipped mid-drive and teach him to match up better. He also could see that the power curve of the balls-of-the-feet oarsman matched up just fine, and no change was warranted.

He rigged each seat individually, as he and his coaching staff do at Washington, to suit each athlete’s dimensions, based partly on Peach-detected data. The athlete whose handle path was in front of everyone else’s could move his foot stretchers to bow. The rower who struggled to swing out of bow due to an old injury had his seat angled forward. Longer-limbed oarsmen might have their spread or inboard adjusted to make the crew more efficient.

By July, the crew that had to go through the last-chance qualifying regatta in May just to race in Paris won the bronze, the first Olympic medal for a U.S. eight since 2016.

“You have to be cautious to not go off on a weird direction or to not trust the stopwatch or your eye. We check that we’re matching up, but we don’t get too into the weeds with it.” and New Zealand fours that shows the American crew’s boat gliding smoothly ahead compared to the Kiwi’s powerful thrust and check.

On the erg, the silver-medal-winning New Zealand crew could produce more power as measured in watts. But on the water, a smooth catch and applying pressure on the foot stretchers together (which the Peach system measures also), makes the application of power more effective.

“We didn’t have the most watts,” Galvanek said, “so we needed to find the 32

APRIL 2025

Like almost every U.S. National Team rower, sweep oarsman-turned-Olympicsingle-sculler Jacob Plihal hits the water with an NK SpeedCoach, a heart-rate monitor, and a GPS watch. He’s also added a new system from start-up XBoat, a company led by former collegiate lightweight oarsmen Jordi Cabanas (Princeton ’19) and Tom Lee (Yale ’90). XBoat amasses a large amount of data similar to what Peach provides and also measures force at the pin with a replacement oarlock.

Using Bluetooth, the XBoat technology, however, downloads the data to the phones of rowers and coaches automatically, which streamlines the process. The system is designed from the start to integrate with any kind of sensor, including biological and environmental. It’s all about “more ways to collect data and use it,” Plihal said.

XBoat is designed to fit into the rowing experience as seamlessly as possible, Cabanas says.

“When you come back, the data is just there.”

The intent of XBoat’s founders is to provide rowers and coaches useful information as quickly and directly as possible.

Plihal, who began rowing in high school in Vashon Island, Wash., graduated from Boston’s Northeastern University in 2018, where he captained the crew and was nominated an IRA all-American three times. He sculled in quads and doubles on U23, World Rowing Cup, and Pan American teams but went into the 2024 Olympic year as a sweep rower.

He switched to the single for Olympic trials in April and won the right to represent the U.S. in Paris, where he raced a 6:41.9, the fastest time ever by a U.S. single sculler.

“The initial user feedback of improvement when using XBoat is night and day,” said Cabanas, a self-described “nerd in the boat.”

“It’s a generational shift,” Lee said. “I can’t see how a non-data-focused team can win in the near future.”

XBoat has not been released for sale to the general public yet.

Plihal says XBoat’s measurements of his stroke length, catch angle, finish angle, power produced in watts, force curve, and acceleration profiles are crucial to ensuring that “perception matches reality” and useful as “a reminder and quick check-in” as he trains and improves.

Reigning collegiate national-champion coaches Michael Callahan (Washington heavyweight men), Billy Boyce (Harvard lightweight men), and Paul Rassam (Princeton lightweight women) all use NK SpeedCoaches and the Peach system and all cited two key benefits of the in-boat measurement technologies: validation and reinforcement.

“It’s another way to show the athlete what we’re talking about,” said Rassam, who used the Peach system sparingly for five or six years (the last four of which the Tigers have won the IRA national championship), mostly in the early part of the season. This year, after graduating two consecutive classes of “very influential” seniors, Rassam plans to use the technology more as he coaches a smaller squad featuring an “impressive” freshman class, including walk-ons.

Boyce, whose Harvard varsity and second varsity eights both won at last year’s IRA by clear margins, also uses the Peach system for “confirmation, to verify things that you think.”

“You have to be cautious to not go off on a weird direction or to not trust the stopwatch or your eye. We check that we’re matching up, but we don’t get too into the weeds with it. We use it in a general way.

The more you use it, the more you get from it.”

Peach Innovations grew out of the afterhours hobby of Paul Haines, a British club oarsman. Haines studied at Cambridge and “failed to leave,” working for a dozen years in sensor design and developing onboard electronics for professional motorsport.

(Most IndyCar, Formula 1, and other teams

are based in the UK.) In the late ’90s, a Cambridge oarsman remarked to Haines, “It’d be nice if we had that for rowing.” So in his spare time Haines began developing systems for rowing, deciding to “give it a go” in 2001.

“When it comes to sensor design, we really do know what we’re talking about.”

Originally, the Peach system was a technical tool used by crews to develop efficiency. Haines emphasizes that it’s a system rather than just individual measurements. Over the past 20 years, it’s become an everyday tool that helps athletes understand pacing in both training and racing and optimize effort to achieve the day’s objective, whether producing 200 watts for an hour’s training or avoiding blowing up in a race by going too hard off the start.

Especially with college athletes, measuring force output “can get in the guys’ heads, all trying to juice the watts,” said Harvard’s Boyce—and rowing badly as a result.

Callahan sees the same thing, noting that an oarsman can actually register more measured watts while rowing poorly and making the boat slower.

Peach’s Haines agrees: “You can row like an absolute donkey and produce more watts.”

Overreliance on data has its drawbacks.

In basketball, “shooting the three” because data analysis shows three-point shot attempts have the greatest positive outcome on NBA games has dulled the entertainment value of professional basketball.

During the 2010s, Team Sky (later Ineos) cyclists won seven Tours de France in eight years, spending much of their time looking down at their power meters as the biggest-budget, data-driven team “reduced much of cycling’s mystery to mathematical formulas” and “methodical, almost robotic racing,” Velo magazine lamented.

Might data analysis lead crews to a homogeneous rowing style, turning races into waterborne erg tests and robbing the sport of its soul?

“People love numbers but don’t necessarily understand how to use them,” Haines said. “There’s a lot of noise in boats. There really is a limit to the accuracy of what is being measured, and the measurements are proxies” of what makes a boat go faster. “It’s only a tool to help the coach.”

Texas coach Dave O’Neill uses SmartOars for athlete development, APRIL 2025

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selection, and lineups. He calls the system, which uses oar-mounted strain gauges to measure force, “just the right amount of technology to be useful.”

“You don’t have to dedicate a whole boat to use it.”

O’Neill likes being able to use a set, or just a pair, of oars in any boat with any crew, without all the equipment mounting, setup, and calibration required of other systems.

SmartOar’s Bob Martin says the ideal user is the coach who is interested in data and willing and able to use it consistently.

“If you commit yourself to a system, you need to use it with intelligence and discipline,” Martin said.

“We have not become dependent on technology,” O’Neill said. After using a SmartOar, which can transmit data live to the coach via a tablet in the launch as well as store it for later viewing, “our athletes generally know what their power curve is.”

“There is still an art to it you can’t measure,” said the coach of the defending national champions.

The most comprehensive and complex systems involve considerable costs—in both time and money, A basic PowerLine setup from Peach Innovations costs about $10,250, and optional equipment like foot-stretcher force sensors cost another $1,400 each.

Rower displays, coach displays, seatposition sensors, and other options can add hundreds and thousands. Although the wait time for new Peach systems stretches from months to over a year, Martin says coaches have been understanding and patient.

Installing and setting up a Peach system in a rowing shell is no small task. Getting it right is essential, and running wires from each oarlock and other system components, such as impeller-sensor pickups, displays, and foot-stretcher sensors, takes considerable time and effort.

It also adds weight to the boat. Some crews race with the system still installed, using it to record race data for later evaluation. Others race with it because they don’t have the time or inclination to take it out and then re-install it later.

At the other end of the accessibility spectrum—in terms of time, money, and effort—is in-boat technology from Active Tools and Nielsen-Kellerman. Accessibility, in fact, was the original design criterium for NK when developing the SpeedCoach and

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EmPower oarlock products, said Michael Naughton, a long-time oarsman and rowing coach who is Nielsen-Kellerman’s chief operating officer.

“Our philosophy is to design and produce products that are accessible around the world in terms of price point, availability, ease of installation, ease of use, and value while rowing,” Naughton said.

Active Tools also makes practical, dayto-day performance-measuring electronics for rowing. Its ActiveSpeed measures, displays, and records speed (both from GPS and a wireless impeller), stroke rate and count, check, distance, time, and heart rate.

As many as five in-boat units can transmit data to a coach following on the water using the Coach Link.

“In-boat display systems lead to rowers’ making changes much faster,” said Active Tools’ John Ewans.

The UK-based company’s soon-to-bereleased next product will be an oarlockbased measuring system called RapidFit, which features a power module that can be snapped in and out of oarlocks on different boats and that “remembers” each shell’s rigging setup via a radio-frequencyidentification chip.

The new system will allow the least expensive part, the plastic oarlock, to be installed on multiple shells, while a single power module can be used across a club’s fleet.

“We see it as a game-changer for clubs,” Ewans said.

NK, which developed and produced the original performance monitor for the ubiquitous Concept2 erg, applies the same philosophy of “erg simple” data presentation so athletes can make “next stroke” improvements as they row.

For the EmPower oarlock, NK nixed a graphical representation of the rower’s force curve on the in-boat SpeedCoach display (that and other data are available via NK’s LogBook app on iPhones and Android devices) because interpreting it is subjective and often inaccurate, especially during extreme exertion.

Instead, the EmPower oarlock sends catch-angle, finish-angle, force, strokerate, and other data that are displayed numerically and simultaneously—whichever data the user selects—on the SpeedCoach screen.

In a demonstration he presents at coaching conferences, Naughton asks participants to evaluate five graphical

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curves in rapid succession (few can do so accurately) followed by five numbers representing angles (everyone can) to demonstrate how much easier it is to understand numbers.

“Everyone knows stroke rate; few understand catch angle, which NK wants to help rowers know,” Naughton said.

“Technical metrics are part of NK’s normal vocabulary: catch angle, finish angle, peak force, slip, wash, and effective stroke length. I want to get to where that’s part of rowers’ and coaches’ vocabulary.

“We designed a system for the coach to provide athletes with technical and performance targets, and the athletes know if they hit them. All of it is in real time, when the athletes are most likely to be able to make a sustainable change. It’s just like we do with stroke rate—every stroke of every session.”

Although the in-boat technology of today and tomorrow can generate an unlimited supply of information (O’Neill: “an avalanche”), it will never replace the coach. In fact, it makes the coach even more important.

“How we give the athlete information is more important than the information,” Callahan said. Rowers, especially the highly trained and experienced, may regard the barrage of precise measurements as wholly negative feedback—all that they’re doing wrong— and destroy their confidence.

It also can aid coaches in dealing with the attitudes that often come with highly recruited athletes, who have well-developed confidence in the skills that landed them at the top programs.

By showing, with indisputable data, how certain proposed changes make the boat faster, coaches can use the in-boat technology to sell them to their rowers.

“Crossing the chasm of trust from the national team-level athlete as a junior coach, that’s a big leap for a lot of athletes,” Galvanek said.

Having used the latest in-boat technology to coach a world-class crew up to the next, and ultimate, level of Olympic champion, he should know.

CHIP DAVIS is the founder and publisher of Rowing News. An oarsman from birth, he rowed on championship crews at St. Paul’s School and Dartmouth College, where he captained the lightweights. Now he sculls in Vermont when the weather is suitable and ergs the other half of the year.

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YOUTH PREVIEW 2025

TOO BIG, TOO CROWDED, TOO CLUBBY? OVER 4,000 YOUTH ATHLETES FROM MORE THAN 200 ROWING PROGRAMS ARE EXPECTED TO COMPETE FOR 2025 USROWING YOUTH NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP TITLES AS SUPER-CLUBS CONTINUE TO DOMINATE. STORY BY CHIP DAVIS PHOTOGRAPHY BY SPORTGRAPHICS.COM

Right: RowAmerica Rye is the defending national champion in the women’s youth eight—“from a young age, teaching rowers to put emphasis on form, to move the boat better than their erg shows,” says head coach Marko Serafinmovski.

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YOUTH PREVIEW 2025

T

he 2025 racing season for high-school, junior, and youth

crews in the United States reaches its peak at the USRowing Youth National Championships, June 12-15, at Nathan Benderson Park in Sarasota.

Over 4,000 youth athletes from 224 rowing programs qualified for Youth Nationals through 12 qualifying regattas last year, with similar numbers—and some adjustments—expected this year.

The winning crews will be many of the same names that have won most of the many youth national champion titles handed out by USRowing in recent years.

This year, Marin Rowing Association, Princeton National Rowing Association/Mercer, and St. Joseph’s Prep will be top competitors for the men’s youth eight, the premier event.

RowAmerica Rye, Saugatuck Rowing Club, and Greenwich Crew rank among those most likely to win the other premier event, the women’s youth eight.

All six were in the A final of Youth Nationals last year, and they all finished at or near the top of the youth eights fields at the Head of the Charles in the fall. Any one of another half-dozen crews, like NorCal, Central Catholic, Sarasota, Saratoga, St. Andrews, Newport Aquatic Center, or Newport Sea Base could be top performers at Youth Nationals.

“It is so hard to predict these things,” said Parker Washburn, the girls varsity rowing coach (and dorm parent and physics teacher) at Deerfield Academy, the top scholastic program at the 2023 Youth Nationals. “But looking over some of the results from last spring and this fall, it seems that those schools and clubs had good speed heading into the winter.”

“I am mindful that every year is different,” said Sandy Armstrong, executive director and U19 girls head coach at Marin Rowing Association, where she has coached for 37 years. “We’re in a good position to have the speed we need, but are still developing.”

Marin has a good though small group of young athletes who progress every day and are “fun,” Armstrong said. But there is no shortage of fast crews between them and a win in Sarasota.

“We have a ton of respect for our competitors across the board.”

Occurring the last weekend of March this year, the San Diego Crew Classic is the first major benchmark event of the season for youth crews. The 2025 edition—the biggest yet, with 430 entries— features 13 women’s youth eights, including Connecticut Boat Club, Marin, Marina, Newport Aquatic Center, Norcal, Oakland Strokes, and Saugatuck. The men’s youth eight event has attracted a similarly competitive field of 11 crews from across the country.

“San Diego will be pretty telltale,” Armstrong said.

Large and well-run clubs, as opposed to school crews, have come to dominate youth rowing in the United States. Last year, the 2024 USRowing Youth National Championship Regatta offered national championship titles in 45 events and awarded 41 of them. (There were no entries in three of the seven Para events, none in the mixedyouth inclusive double.) Of those 41, 33 were won by clubs, eight by school crews—mostly scullers.

For 2025, 39 “national champion” titles are at stake at Youth Nationals, across three age categories—U16, U17, and U19—and including, curiously, “national champion” events for second varsity crews, which means titles for those who aren’t the best even in their own programs.

Left: Princeton National Rowing Association / Mercer’s men’s youth eight was one of the top crews at last year’s Youth Nationals and Head of the Charles.

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RowAmerica Rye, a private for-profit rowing club in Rye, N.Y., lived up to its tagline “Be a part of our success” by qualifying crews to race in 19 events at last year’s Youth Nationals, winning four— including both premier events—and earning spots on the podium in six additional events.

“It was a good run for us,” said RowAmerica Rye head coach Marko Serafinmovski. “I hope for similar success this year. We focus on what we can do. We want the kids to row well, primarily.”

Of the 224 schools and clubs that qualified for and entered last year’s Youth Nationals, most had only one or two crews racing at the event. But 12 clubs qualified and raced 10 or more crews each, placing high enough at the dozen regional regattas to earn entry to Youth Nationals.

Those dozen super-clubs and their fleets of qualifying crews— Community Rowing, Inc. (10), Greenwich Crew (14), Los Gatos Rowing Club (14), Maritime Rowing Club (15), Norcal Crew (11), Norwalk River Rowing Association (10), Oregon Rowing Unlimited (13), RowAmerica Rye (19), St. Andrew Rowing Club (12), Sarasota Crew (14), Saugatuck Rowing Club (13), and Whitemarsh Boat Club (11)—could by themselves hold a regatta bigger than the IRA or NCAA collegiate national championships. Another dozen or so clubs like Marin, Oakland Strokes, and PNRA/Mercer could well qualify 10 or more crews this year.

They are fast and successful in the same ways clubs in other sports are competitive: They employ and support professional coaches, they attract large numbers of athletes from high-achieving families, and they train specifically for one sport, year-round.

“As soon as you walk in here, you know what you need to do— give 100 percent,” said Serafinmovski. “We don’t have coaches that are just here to get a paycheck. Our eight coaches’ hearts are 100 percent in it.”

St. Louis Rowing Club, founded on the Mississippi River in 1875, now features vibrant masters and junior programs of over 100 rowers each. A successful youth club and collegiate oarsman before becoming a professional coach, Tim Frank said his boys and girls crews this year “have a lot of potential, although we graduated some good seniors.”

Frank coaches both the boys and girls crews, a heavy workload, “but I love it.” Last year, St. Louis won both the women’s varsity eight and four at the Midwest Junior Rowing Championships on Ohio’s Harsha Lake on its way to Youth Nationals.

At the 2024 USRowing Central Youth Championships, Dallas United Crew won the men’s youth eight and finished first and second in the men’s second varsity youth eight.

“We have been working diligently to move pieces into place to defend our titles in the eights,” said DUC men’s head coach Ben Williams, after 10 of the 16 winning oarsmen graduated from the program.

“I’m confident we’ll have great competition in the Texas Rowing Center and OKC Riversport men’s eights. There’s lots of horsepower in those crews, and being led by strong coaches in Eric Dilworth and Chris Leonard, it would be more than naive to count them out.”

From year to year, a crew or two from the handful of top rowing schools—Deerfield Academy, Belmont Hill School, New Trier High School, and others—qualifies, enters, and races in the A Right: Greenwich Crew’s women’s youth eight finished in the A final of the 2024 USRowing Youth National Championships and raced to a third-place finish at the 2024 Head of the Charles.

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final at Youth Nationals—and perhaps even wins a medal. But the age of super-club dominance has arrived and established itself.

One of America’s top rowing high schools, St. Joseph’s Preparatory School in Philadelphia (“The Prep”), has taken an “if you can’t lick ’em, join ’em” approach under coach John Fife. After trying to race both a scholastic and club schedule in the same season, St. Joe’s quit racing in the Manny Flick series and Philadelphia City Championships on its home Schuylkill course, withdrew from the Philadelphia Scholastic Rowing Association, and has been pursuing a club-like training and racing program year-round.

Instead of racing clubs at Lake Mercer on a Saturday and rushing back to Philadelphia for a Sunday Flicks race as it used to, St. Joe’s is focused on being a youth team, Fife said, with the traditional Stotesbury Cup Regatta the only remaining scholastic event on the The Prep’s schedule. The USRowing Mid-Atlantic Youth Championships, which the Philly rowers won on their way to a silvermedal performance at Youth Nationals last year, is now the regional qualifier for St. Joe’s In March, Fife took his top two eights—St. Joe’s is all male— on a spring-training trip to Sarasota, where they scrimmaged (successfully) Sarasota Crew and Belen Jesuit at Nathan Benderson Park while staying in a hotel within walking distance of the course.

St. Joe’s will race club crews, including a dual with Greenwich Crew, at Mercer Lake at different regattas on three weekends in March and April, followed by two more regattas, in Overpeck, N.Y. and Middletown, Del., before the Mid-Atlantic qualifier and Stotesbury Cup Regatta. It’s a fuller schedule than most colleges race, and it’s been working well for The Prep.

St. Joe’s won the men’s youth eight at the 2021 Youth Nationals, an inflection point for the program. On top of the long history of rowing at The Prep, for the past five or six years Fife has had good groups of leaders stepping up each year. They train year-round, with a full autumn racing schedule followed by intense winter training, before the all-important spring championship season. About 60 percent of The Prep’s oarsmen row and race together in the summer as Hawk Rowing Club, keying on racing at Royal Canadian Henley Regatta in August.

“It takes losing to learn to get faster,” said Fife about the transformation of St. Joe’s into more of a club program. “We lost, and realized we had to work harder and be better at this.”

“Rowing has gotten a lot faster in the last 30 years. We’ve recognized and embraced that.”

The original Henley, Great Britain’s Henley Royal Regatta, has been the reward trip for successful school crews traditionally.

As Youth Nationals has evolved into a mostly club championship, successful scholastic crews are skipping it and doubling down on Henley trips.

“Why? The rise of year-round club rowing,” said a New England prep school coach, whose crews row only in the short spring season.

“And if you aren’t competitive with the clubs, there’s no offsetting value of a cultural experience [at Youth Nationals] like there is at Henley.”

Beginning this year, scholastic programs have fewer paths to qualify for Youth Nationals, since USRowing removed three scholastic regattas from its list of qualifiers. The Philadelphia Scholastic Rowing Association, Virginia Scholastic Rowing Association, and the Scholastic Rowing Association of America left Left: Coach Geordie Macleod’s Marin Rowing Association men’s youth eight was the top U.S. finisher at the Head of the Charles.

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the national governing body’s insurance and membership programs after USRowing imposed new requirements and certifications. After the regattas quit USRowing, they were dropped from the list of qualifiers.

Also dropped this year were the two U15 events, men’s and women’s coxed quads. The national governing body’s explanation of the change noted that while U15 athletes represented only three percent of participants at last year’s Youth Nationals, they accounted for 66 percent of exclusions—”nearly all due to failures to yield during time trials,” a clear safety concern.

Experienced junior coaches wonder if more lower events might need to be trimmed as well.

“The regatta has gotten way too big; it needs to be pared down,” Fife said. “Athletes are spread out over too many different events; U15 and U16 don’t need a national championship.

Nationwide, coaches want to make it simpler and more true, like the IRA.” To fit all 853 boats into a four-day regatta, even with Nathan Benderson Park’s 10-lane course, Youth Nationals does away with heats, repechages, and normal semifinals and instead uses time trials to set A/B semifinals, sending everyone else directly to lower finals.

Conditions can, and do, change during the time it takes to run 30 crews down the course in a time trial. Using a time trial creates situations like last year’s in the men’s youth eight, in which New England Interscholastic Rowing Association champion Deerfield finished one-tenth of a second behind the 16th crew in the time trial. That landed Deerfield directly in the C final, which the Massachusetts boarding school won. If a crew fails to make the top 16 in the possibly variable conditions of the time trial, at Youth Nationals it’s sent straight to the lower finals for a single-race-only regatta experience.

“The regatta needs to refocus on making sure the right and best crews are competing for a national championship, rather than the number of crews competing at the regatta,” said Fife.

Armstrong agrees that the popularity of Youth Nationals and its growth through adding lower age categories “created a monster,” and she misses “the good old days of the top two crews from each region” gathering to decide the national champion more simply.

Armstrong is concerned also about the effects of putting national-championship pressure on younger and younger athletes.

All the championship banners in her boathouse are nice, she said, but it’s “engaging parents at a new level that is not helpful.”

As their children achieve early rowing success, it pushes expectations and college recruiting earlier and earlier. Practically speaking, it’s as if novice coaches are teaching Learn to Row and trying to win a national championship all at once.

“It’s too much too soon and burning kids out,” Armstrong said.

“We’re beginning to see kids leave and go to other sports.”

Armstrong and her colleagues will be spending time reviewing the program and “making sure we’re developing human beings healthfully and helpfully.”

Meanwhile, 39 new national champions will be crowned in June at the 2025 USRowing Youth National Championships.

Right: Saugatuck’s women’s youth eight finished second to RowAmerica Rye at the 2024 Head of the Charles.

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R O W I N G C ATA L O G . C O M

SPORT SCIENCE | TRAINING | COXING | BEST PRACTICES | FUEL | COACH DEVELOPMENT

TRAINING

SP OR T SCIENCE

The Gyroscope Fantasy Crews could row cleaner, technical errors could be minimized, a gain in comfort could release more power, and teams could row skinnier shells. If only…

T PHOTO: LISA WORTHY

he editor of Rowing News heard

about an interesting idea and passed it on to me to discuss. It’s about a possible gyroscopic effect that the oars are supposed to have on the boat, especially given the increasing stroke rate in high-caliber racing. The thought is that such effects could have a stabilizing influence on boat balance during recovery, and I suppose coaches are wondering if this would be another reason to train for high cadences.

Gyroscopes are used to achieve greater stability in certain objects, and such an effect would be beneficial for rowing.

Crews could row cleaner, technical errors could be minimized, a gain in comfort could release more power, and teams could row skinnier shells that are more difficult to upset and have less water resistance.

All spinning objects have gyroscopic properties and tend to maintain the orientation of their rotation. This is because a rotating object has angular momentum, and this momentum must be conserved.

Any change in the orientation of its axis of rotation leads to a change in angular momentum, which the object will resist.

Do our oars actually produce a gyroscopic effect strong enough to help

us maintain balance? To answer this question, we need to examine the criteria for a noticeable balancing effect. The greater the mass of an object—the farther away it is from its axis of rotation and the faster it rotates—the greater the angular momentum and thus its resistance to a change in its orientation.

A gyroscope needs to rotate at a high rate, typically measured in thousands of revolutions per minute (r.p.m.), to generate the gyroscopic effect and maintain its orientation. The problem in rowing is that the oars are not spinning consistently. In fact, at the finish and catch the horizontal APRIL 2025

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TRAINING rotational velocity is zero, and oars achieve their highest rotation only in the middle of the recovery. This means that any possible gyroscopic effect would last only a fraction of the recovery.

Furthermore, the maximum rotational velocity reaches about one r.p.m. This does

Gyroscopes are used to achieve greater stability in certain objects, and such an effect would be beneficial for rowing.

VOLKER NOLTE, an internationally recognized expert on the biomechanics of rowing, is the author of Rowing Science, Rowing Faster, and Masters Rowing. He’s a retired professor of biomechanics at the University of Western Ontario, where he coached the men’s rowing team to three Canadian national titles.

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COX ING

Ready for Anything Being comfortable in both fours and eights will help you seize any opportunities that come your way and should make practices more enjoyable for you and your crew.

T

his spring racing season, you want to be ready for anything, including the opportunity to cox a shell you’re not in normally. Most of us are used to being in eights or fours primarily, but we need to be ready and willing to switch to the other hull on any given day.

Maybe your program splits up your eights into fours for rower selection. Maybe your team roster is bigger than ever and

is moving into eights to get the whole squad out on the water. At all levels, being comfortable in both boats will help you seize any practice or race opportunities that come your way and should make practices a lot more enjoyable for you and your crew.

For advice about switching between boat classes, I spoke to Emelie Eldracher, Paralympic PR3 four coxswain, World Rowing Championships silver medalist,

PHOTO: LISA WORTHY

not change much even when rowers race at the highest stroke rates. Which means that the possible force would be negligible. In addition, the mass of our oars is small.

These factors alone torpedo the idea of using our oars as gyroscopic instruments. In addition, rowers would have to fix the axis of rotation of the oars relative to the boat to achieve a compensating gyroscopic force.

Result: The blades would hit the water even with a small roll. Because rowers try to keep their blades at a constant distance from the water surface, the axis of rotation of the oars remains constant in space—hence no generation of righting gyroscopic force.

What would we have to do to use a gyroscope to stabilize our boats? First, we would need a wheel of considerable weight, with most of the mass toward the wheel’s perimeter. The wheel must spin at high r.p.m.’s, which would require an electric motor with battery. The wheel would need to be fixed to the boat vertically, with its axis perpendicular to the direction of rowing, and encased to reduce wind resistance.

Bottom line: We rowers should forget about gyroscopic effects to maintain our balance. Instead, we must continue to rely on human feeling and skill to keep our boats upright.

and MIT ’22 and ’25. Eldracher raced eights in college for MIT and then the Para four at the international level, so she has plenty of experience in both boats.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: If you’re switching from an eight to a four, you lose an enormous amount of visual information about your boat.

“You go from being able to see blades and make technical decisions based off what you’re seeing on bladework to having to shift your sense completely to feeling,” Eldracher said.

While this can be frustrating initially, it can be very helpful in developing your boat feel.

Eldracher offers this helpful order of operations for breaking down what you’re feeling in the four technically.

“Say I feel a dip to one side. The first

“Video review in a four becomes even more helpful to coxswains because you get to see from the side after practice what was happening,” question is: Where in the stroke am I feeling that? The next question is: Why do I think it’s happening? The next question is: Do I think I know who it’s coming from?”

Even if you’ve just hopped in the boat and can’t answer the last two questions yet, thinking through these steps will give you important insights into what’s going on in your boat and help hone your boat feel.

You can work on this outside of the boat, too.

“Video review in a four becomes even more helpful to coxswains because you get to see from the side after practice what was happening,” Eldracher said. The review enables you to “pair what you’re feeling to what’s actually happening in the boat.”

With the four, “there are only four people we’re giving individual feedback to,” Eldracher said, and it’s important to

assess: “Is it helping? Was I giving you the information you need to be successful?”

That communication is essential, Eldracher says, because in a four each rower represents 25 percent of the crew.

The four also can be less stable than the eight but it generally turns quickly and effectively; if you’re used to an eight, you’ll probably breathe a sigh of relief getting a four around a tight turn. While you do lose the visual reference points on the sides and behind that you have in an eight, you gain a clear sight line all the way down the course in front of you.

If you’re switching from a four to an eight, you’ll have the opposite experience.

The eight steers more slowly than the four, so you must plan several steps ahead, but you have the benefit of seeing on either side of you (as well as behind you, if you’re on a busy river).

If you’re just getting in the eight, remember that the boat takes time to stop, start, and turn. (That said, it’s also a fast boat, so you’ll have to account for things happening more quickly.) Caution: Any obstacle that suddenly disappears from your field of view is almost certainly now directly in front of you. When in doubt, weigh enough!

If you’ve been in the four, you might be visually overwhelmed when you hop into the eight, but you’ll learn to appreciate it quickly. In the eight, you “can see all the blades and make technical decisions from what you’re seeing in the bladework,” Eldracher said.

“Reading” the blades in the eight is nuanced, but the basics of what to look for are straightforward: Know what your coach wants the path of the blade to the water to look like, when your rowers are expected to square the blade, and how fast they’re supposed to execute the recovery.

If you’re not sure where to begin, watch the timing of the catch and work backward through the recovery. See who is late or early and what kind of vertical movement the blade has on the recovery so you can help your rowers be direct to the catch. This should give you a lot to work with. You should also observe square-up timing as well as look for any blades that are popping out of the water early at the finish.

You’ll almost certainly see a lot

happening in the eight. Resist the urge to give all your feedback at once. Instead, take your time to read the blades, assess what the most important technical changes are, and give your rowers feedback on what actions they should take. When you’re trying to get a pulse on the boat, the eight allows for great face-to-face interaction with your stroke seat.

“In the eight, I can ask my stroke seat, ‘What are you feeling?’” quickly and easily, even during a piece, Eldracher said.

Use this to your advantage. It can be great for checking in on things like rush, check, and rating issues, but the opinions or mood might be different farther back in the boat. One of the challenges of the eight can be keeping eight different personalities on the same page. It’s your job to be the single unifying voice; your stroke seat isn’t coxing the boat.

No matter what boat you’re in, get in, get comfy, assess the boat’s steering capability, and begin assessing what you can do to help your crew technically.

And if you’re asked to be in a boat you don’t normally cox, always answer with an emphatic “yes!” You’ll learn something new and get a chance to prove yourself in a fresh situation.

HANNAH WOODRUFF is an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator for the Radcliffe heavyweight team. She began rowing at Phillips Exeter Academy, was a coxswain at Wellesley College, and has coached college, highschool, and club crews for over 10 years

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TRAINING RECRUI T ING

Navigating the Recruiting Process Most rowing coaches are honorable and transparent, and recruits should demonstrate the same level of integrity.

R

owing recruiting is a unique journey for every athlete; there is no one-sizefits-all approach. The process can be both exciting and overwhelming, with questions arising about when to begin, how to navigate offers, and when to finalize decisions.

Timing the Recruiting Process

For high-school athletes aspiring to row at the collegiate level, beginning the recruiting process early is crucial.

However, one of the most frequently asked questions is: When is it time to complete the process? The answer varies from athlete to athlete. Some rowers receive offers as early as their junior year, while others may not finalize their college choice until the end of the fall semester of their senior year.

One common dilemma recruits face is whether to accept an early offer while continuing to explore other options. This is a delicate situation that requires careful consideration. Most rowing coaches are honorable and transparent, and recruits should approach the process with the same level of integrity. If a coach extends an offer during junior year, it is essential to honor the commitment while keeping certain key factors in mind.

The Importance of a Backup Plan

Even with an offer in hand, every recruit should have a contingency plan. While coaches can advocate for athletes during the admissions process, final decisions rest with the university’s admissions office. This means that even with strong athletic support, acceptance is not always guaranteed.

For example, if an athlete has a 3.1 GPA and a 1250 SAT score and is aiming for a APRIL 2025

Honesty and Communication

Transparency is key in the recruiting process. Recruits should be upfront with all coaches with whom they’re communicating, especially if they’re considering backup

Having a backup plan ensures that recruits are not left scrambling if things do not go as expected.

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top-tier academic institution, she should be prepared for the possibility of needing alternative options. Having a backup plan ensures that recruits are not left scrambling if things do not go as expected.

options. Coaches appreciate honesty, and it helps foster trust throughout the process.

Likewise, it’s essential to maintain open communication with a top-choice program until an official offer is confirmed in writing from the university admissions office.

Seeking Guidance

If something sounds too good to be true, it’s essential to ask questions and seek guidance from experienced professionals, mentors, or trusted advisors. The recruiting process is complex, and making informed decisions is critical to ensuring a successful collegiate rowing experience.

By approaching the recruiting journey with integrity, preparation, and open communication, high-school rowers can navigate the process with confidence and secure the best possible opportunity for their academic and athletic future.

ROBBIE TENENBAUM coached at the NCAA level for over 30 years and with the U.S. Junior National Team for eight.

He now helps rowers and families navigate the university recruiting process.

FUEL

Optimizing Your Immune Response Rowers who skimp on food and have lackluster diets are more likely to get sick and injured compared to well-nourished peers. Fighting inflammation demands good food.

“I

fear getting sick when I travel to regattas. Anything I can eat to prevent illness?”

“What’s the best diet to boost my immune system?”

“I have nasty scrapes from when I tripped and fell. Will extra protein enhance healing and curb infection?”

Staying healthy is a top priority for every rower who wants to be able to train well, improve athletic performance, and compete at a high level. But athletes get sick and injured. Even if you eat the healthiest diet around, torn ligaments, broken bones, cuts, scrapes, and bruises happen, to say nothing of colds, Covid, and the flu.

Nutrition is key to reducing the risk of illness and injury, as well as speeding up recovery. Older rowers in particular want to enjoy an immuno-protective diet owing to reduced immune function with aging.

The immune system is a highly active organ system that’s distributed through the whole body. How well it functions depends on how well you nourish it. Rowers who skimp on food and have lackluster diets are more likely to get sick and injured compared to well-nourished peers. Fighting inflammation demands good food.

Moderate exercise itself improves immune function and is health-protective.

But intense and prolonged endurance exercise is associated with depressed immune function. That’s why, to reduce their risk of illness and injury, rowers should eat well on a daily basis.

Inadequate sleep, anxiety, mental and physical stress can also erode immune function, as can dehydration. (The first line

avocado, peanut butter, olive oil, and oily fish (salmon, sardines). Including some healthy fat in each meal not only helps tame inflammation but also enhances absorption of health-protective vitamins A, D, E, and K. Fat also makes the food taste good; it carries flavor. You’ll want to adjust your fat intake according to how many calories you need after having met your protein and carb requirements.

• Choose primarily nutrient-dense foods for vitamins and minerals. Deeply colored

of immune defense is a mouth moist with saliva.) Good nutrition helps nip in the bud little niggling injuries that can explode into bigger ones, and sniffles that can turn into pneumonia.

Here are some nutrition tips for rowers who want to optimize their immune function to fend off illness and injury as well as enhance recovery from daily training sessions.

• Eat enough calories. The less you eat, the

less energy your body has to repair and heal itself—and the fewer nutrients you consume. Chronically skimping on food (i.e., stopping eating because you think you should or the food is gone, and not because you feel satisfied) can predispose you to muscle, tendon, and ligament injuries and is associated with deficiencies in calcium, iron, vitamin D, carbohydrates, and protein.

• Eat enough protein. Protein provides

amino acids that are the building blocks needed to make antibodies and other antimicrobial factors involved in the healing process. Rowers should target about 20 to 30 plus grams of protein per meal, depending on body size. That’s the equivalent of three eggs or a can of tuna or one cup of cottage cheese or five tablespoons of peanut butter or the whole 15-ounce can of kidney beans. Note: You need to eat more calories of plant (as compared to animal) protein to consume enough of the amino acids that are essential for fighting infection. Injured rowers who are unable to train can consume too little protein if they fear weight gain and cut too many calories.

After surgery for an ACL repair or joint replacement, athletes may fail to eat enough protein because of low appetite.

• Eat enough carbohydrate. Without carbs

for fuel, the body burns protein. Hence, steady carbohydrate intake (preferably from nutrient-dense, fiber-rich whole grains, vegetables, and fruits) can spare protein from being used for fuel. The recommended intake per day (1.5 to 2.25 grams of carbohydrate per pound of body weight, three to five plus grams per kilogram) translates into consuming at least 200 to 350 calories from starches, fruits, and veggies per meal. Don’t be one of the many athletes who overeats protein and skimps on grains. If that sounds familiar because you fear carbs are fattening, think again. Excess calories of any kind of food are fattening.

• Carbs are particularly important during prolonged exercise. To prevent

hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), endurance rowers should consume a pre-row snack of at least 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrate (100 to 250 calories) during 60 to 90 minutes of intense exercise, and more than 60 grams (about 250 calories) per hour during sessions lasting for more than two hours. This will reduce hypoglycemia with its stresshormone response that negatively impacts the immune system. After a hard workout, refueling with carbs plus protein (chocolate milk) within two hours helps restore immune function and optimizes recovery.

• Enjoy healthy fat at each meal. Healthy

fruit (oranges, blueberries, strawberries) and veggies (broccoli, carrots, red peppers) are rich in not only vitamins and minerals but also many immuneboosting phytochemicals. They are better than anything you’ll find in a pill.

That said, some nutrients can be hard to consume without supplements: —Vitamin D (2,000 to 4,000 IU per day during winter months to maintain a normal blood level) —Iron (pills should be taken under medical supervision) —Omega-3 fats DHA and EPA if you don’t eat fish (250 milligrams per day may benefit immune tolerance and reduce inflammation).

Supplements such as HMB, creatine, collagen, and probiotics may or may not be helpful; responses vary from athlete to athlete.

• Keep your gut happy. An estimated 80 percent to 90 percent of immune function stems from gut microbes. They thrive on fiber from fruit, vegetables, and whole grains, as well as fermented foods such as yogurt, kefir, and kombucha.

The bottom line: To create a strong defense system that helps fend off illness and injury, keep your immune system well fortified with adequate protein, calories, and fiber-rich carbs. By eating for health (rather than dieting to lose weight), you’ll boost your chances of getting to the podium NANCY CLARK, M.S., R.D., C.S.S.D., counsels both fitness exercisers and competitive athletes in the Boston area (Newton; 617-795-1875). Her best-selling Sports Nutrition Guidebook is a popular resource, as is her online workshop. For more information, visit NancyClarkRD.com.

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TRAINING COACH DE V EL OPMEN T

The Lineup Challenge The most effective way to reduce selection drama is to foster a culture where everyone’s goal is truly what’s best for the team.

F

ew decisions a coach makes are

As The Trunk Turns Peripheral vision and awareness of the location of the blade enable your upper body to follow the path of the oar handle naturally.

T

runk rotation is a component

of sweep-rowing technique that allows you to keep weight into the rigger and follow the path of the oar handle. Falling away from the work through the stroke cycle is a common flaw, especially with novices.

Neurologically speaking, the trunk will follow where the eyes are directed.

In the boat, an effective exercise for facilitating proper rotation is to track the blade from the corner of your eye, while not turning your head, from the time you start your slide on the recovery until the blade is in the water.

Peripheral vision and awareness of the location of the blade enable your upper body to follow the path of the oar handle naturally. A more common rowing drill is rowing outside-arm-only, which emphasizes your body’s staying square to the path of the oar handle as it swivels around the pin.

Exercises on land also can help train the muscles of trunk rotation. Example:

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trunk rotation with an elastic band. Stand with a staggered stance and the elastic coming from the opposite side of your front leg. Keep your abdominals engaged and the bottom of your body still. Rotate your body to the opposite side of where the elastic is coming from while keeping your head centered with your trunk. Return and repeat.

Another exercise is the oblique crunch with feet up on a physio ball. Lay on your back with your knees bent and your legs up on a physio ball. Your back must be flat on the ground. With your hands behind your head, raise your upper trunk and twist to bring one elbow toward the opposite knee.

Keep your abdominals tight during the movement. Do not let your abdominals inflate out as you lift MARLENE ROYLE, who won national titles in rowing and sculling, is the author of Tip of the Blade: Notes on Rowing. She has coached at Boston University, the Craftsbury Sculling Center, and the Florida Rowing Center.

Her Roylerow Performance Training Programs provides coaching for masters rowers. Email Marlene at roylerow@ aol.com or visit www.roylerow.com.

Set Clear Selection Criteria

The worst time to explain your approach to lineup selection is when you’re defending a controversial decision.

At the start of the season, establish and communicate your selection framework to your entire team. When athletes understand how they’re being evaluated, they can focus on improvement rather than speculation.

Document Thoroughly

Your athletes deserve decisions based on comprehensive data, not just recent impressions. I always kept a notebook in

PHOTO: LISA WORTHY

TRAINING

scrutinized as closely as lineups.

Everyone has an opinion, and understandably so. The position of rowers and coxswains on the team—maybe even their ability to compete at all—is at stake. The team’s performance, and maybe even the coach’s ability to keep her job, is on the line. And for the coach, especially the head coach, the decision falls back on you every time. There’s no one else making the final call. Just you.

We’ve all been there. An athlete is unhappy with his boating and he wants to argue his way into a better crew. Or a few rowers from the varsity eight come to you after practice to tell you why they need the 2V coxswain in their boat.

Yes, sometimes this is inevitable. But you want to do everything you can to avoid the drama that often surrounds selection.

It will lead to discontented athletes, wasted time, and unnecessary stress. By communicating clearly about the selection process–before, during, and after—and being transparent in your decisions and empathetic with your athletes, you can sidestep a lot of this.

my toolbox where I recorded the times for all pieces and observations from practice.

All this was then added to a huge Google Doc with the same information from other coaches on staff that allowed us to compare the performances of crews and individuals from practice to practice, week to week, and even over the course of the whole year. This documentation both informed our decisions and helped us explain them.

When that frustrated athlete questions why she wasn’t selected for a certain crew, having specific data transforms the conversation from emotional to objective.

PHOTO: LISA WORTHY

Maintain Ongoing Communication

Transparency isn’t a single conversation; it’s a continuous dialogue.

Whenever athletes were switched in a practice, my assistant coaches and I would meet with them on the dock afterward to tell them exactly what happened. We often rehearsed what we were going to say to make sure it was as clear and succinct as possible. “Boat A beat boat B by four seconds. When you two switched, boat B beat boat A by two seconds. That means rower X beat rower Y by six seconds.”

If the results were inconclusive or

other factors influenced them (weather, steering, etc,), we told them that, too. You stand to gain trust by saying exactly that and letting your rowers know how you’ll make the decision and what the next steps are.

It took time, but it was always worth it.

Respond to Disappointment With Empathy

Even with perfect communication, some athletes will struggle with lineup decisions. Acknowledge their disappointment without becoming defensive. Provide specific, actionable feedback about what they can do to improve. Make sure they understand how their current role still contributes to the team’s success. When they understand not just what was decided but why, and what chances they have to get better, they can channel their energy toward improvement rather than frustration.

Build a Culture of Accountability and Selflessness

Ultimately, the most effective way to reduce selection drama is to foster a culture where everyone’s goal is truly what’s best

for the team.

After a spell of explaining every seatrace result to each of the athletes involved (a practice that was often tedious and time-consuming for the coaches), I began to notice that more often than not the athletes getting switched began to come up to us to get the results together. They were able to hear the outcome, shake hands, and move on. I was blown away by the maturity and selflessness my rowers showed in those moments. It reinforced to me that over time trust can be gained by being honest and direct, even when really tough calls need to be made.

The difficult conversations around lineup selection never disappear entirely, but with clear communication, systematic documentation, empathetic delivery, and a team-first culture, they become opportunities for growth rather than sources of division.

MADELINE DAVIS TULLY, competed as a lightweight rower at Princeton and on the U-23 national team before coaching at Stanford, Ohio State, Boston University, and the U-23 national team. Now a leadership and executive coach, she is the founder of the Women’s Coaching Conference.

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On a memorable, sunny, blue-sky, warm fall day (unlike the rainy day of the race), replete in their rowing shirts, replicas of the originals, they had a leisurely paddle, resisting all calls for power pieces from the most fit among them. Manned by bodies hobbled by age, the boat felt like you might expect, but in the videos taken by their partners onshore, the bladework was exact. They looked good!

At the dinner Saturday night, they remembered their late coxswain, John Hartigan, who died too soon and who had overcome spina bifida to become a full-fledged world champion. They remembered the extraordinary Pete Gardner and also Woody Fisher, who had done so much in that era to promote U.S. lightweight rowing and who coached the bronze-medal four.

There was brunch on Sunday, and then they parted company. National teams rarely share the kind of bond that college teammates do. They had not stayed very close through the years.

Making the team had been such a cutthroat experience, how would they interact after all this time?

“The rigor of the boat-selection process, as anyone who’s ever been through a National Selection Camp knows, is brutally binary–you either move

a boat faster or you don’t,” said five man Ralph Nauman. “There’s no way to game the system, since you race everyone over and over and you never know when. Every stroke of that summer had to be the best stroke you could make. Selection had to be brutal to be fair.

“This doesn’t make competitors the nicest people in the world, nor the closest friends. Not that friendships don’t arise; sometimes the daily agony brings us closer to others with a similar sense of the preposterous cost of winning.”

At the celebratory dinner Saturday night in the restaurant ballroom overlooking Lake Lucerne, the partner of one team member confided, “I was curious to see what kind of men you had become.”

“Good question!” Ewing responded.

“Fifty years ago, we all had separate as well as shared reasons for being there: to avenge the disastrous loss by the U.S. lightweight eight in Moscow in 1973; to prove, despite our size or age, that we were as good or better than anyone else in our weight class on the planet; to represent our country in less than mortal combat; and for the love of a sport that had always demanded more than we could give yet somehow always gave back even more, in different coin, in return.”

Sometimes the payoff provides the peace that surpasses understanding. The 1974 gold-medal lightweight eight rowed a 5:56.4 time trial for funding, with swing for the entire 2,000 meters! That row marked the first time a lightweight eight had broken six minutes in qualified no-wind and no-current conditions. It was an almost otherworldly experience— redemption for everything everyone had endured to sit in that boat and row. It was just as rare, and almost as precious, as the gold-medal win itself.

And so it was, over 50 years ago, when members of the U.S. lightweight eight shoved off the dock on the Rotsee to race and become champions of the world.

“At the start of the championship race, each heart was caged by years of discipline, and each body raw fuel from years of training,” Nauman said. “We won. At the line, each body ached, empty, but each heart released, jubilant.”

That’s why those young men were

there—the chance to be champions.

But what kind of men had we become? What did that curious woman see? What did we see?

Honestly, the team was eager to see for themselves. A few had kept in touch with each other. But most had assembled in 1986 in Tulsa, Okla., for their induction into the USRowing Hall of Fame and not seen each other since.

Nauman reflected: “Gratitude.

Humility. Sense of proportion. Sanctity of love. Importance of nurturing. Generosity of spirit. Joy. Recognition that each has lived entwined with others—lovers, spouses, children, parents, relatives, colleagues, friends, neighbors, all precious in different ways.

“Each has walked in sunshine; each has wallowed in difficulty. Each was helped by others along the way…and knows it. Each has had wins; each has suffered losses. Now we trail lives like a shell’s wake behind us, nurture our interior lives, and recognize the fullness of the life that we share. We share it all, we’re old!

“The blessing of a brotherhood and kinship we could not have imagined as young oarsmen when our mantra was simply ‘Pull hard, go fast.’ Freed from competing with each other, there was empathy. We shared stories that made us and shrugged off the aging that has come for us.”

In response to the question posed by the curious dinner guest, three man David Harman had this to say: “We hope she approved of what she heard and saw. Regardless, having learned that Lucerne has been awarded the rights to host the World Championships in 2027, we have already begun dreaming of another trip, recalling so fondly the immense joy of getting together again after so many years to celebrate not only that championship season but, more importantly, the invaluable lessons we all learned and lived in our personal and professional lives from the glorious sport of rowing.”

DOCTOR ROWING, a.k.a. Andy Anderson, has been coxing, coaching, and sculling for 55 years. When not writing, coaching, or thinking about rowing, he teaches at Groton School and considers the fact that all three of his children rowed and coxed—and none played lacrosse—his greatest success.

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DOCTOR ROWING A NDY A NDERSON

Return to Lucerne Fifty years ago, the U.S. lightweight eight won gold on the Rotsee. Now they were back—for nostalgia, fellowship, and to celebrate the lifelong gifts of rowing.

Fifty years to the day last September, the 1974 U.S. National Team lightweight eight returned to Lucerne, Switzerland, to commemorate their gold-medal championship race with a celebratory row down the famed Rotsee course.

Besides being an occasion to celebrate their victory, the trip recalled a magical and to date unparalleled successful day for U.S. rowing. The heavyweight men’s eight and Bill Beldon, lightweight single, also captured gold medals. Jim Dietz took silver in the heavyweight single, and the U.S. lightweight four earned bronze.

While there had been two previous years of exhibition racing for lightweights at the World Championships, 1974 was the first time lightweight boats could compete for official medals. Women’s 1,000-meter racing had concluded three days before the men began.

The relatively new camp selection process was used for determining U.S. National Team boats. In 1974, there were two unofficial training camps for aspiring lightweight rowers eager to make the team—Cambridge Boat Club and Vesper Boat Club. Sixteen oarsmen from those competing training centers were invited later in the summer to Hanover, N.H., for the final selection of the eight and the straight four. The boats then needed to make qualifying times on the Princeton course to receive funding and final approval from the United States Rowing Association to make the trip to Lucerne.

Sometimes these camp boats with oarsmen from different college and club backgrounds blend instantly, and the excitement of rowing with the best in the business makes practicing a dream.

That happened in the summer of 1974 for the lightweights. Dick Ewing, the six man, remembers that their time trial at Princeton was the best row of his life.

They had to meet a 6:15 time standard to go to Lucerne. In mid-August, the late Pete Gardner, the coach of the eight, rode in the launch behind the crew. Time-trial rules forbade a coach from saying anything during the piece, but he told them that every 500 he would signal with his hat if they were on pace. At the first 500, he touched it; at the 1,000, he took it off; and at the 1,500, he was waving it around wildly. They broke six minutes and were on their way overseas.

There were four boats in the race in Lucerne, and despite some headwinds, everyone luxuriated in rowing on what is widely acclaimed to be the world’s premier race course.

A number of the guys had raced in Moscow the previous year, where strong crosswinds had made it a matter of which lane you were in to determine your finish.

In the final-only, the USA rocketed out to a near-length lead and never looked back. The three-mile seat races that the U.S. crew had done in Hanover gave the crew confidence that they would not run out of gas. “We weren’t there to compete,” Ewing said. “We were there to win.”

But no world championship is won easily. “The racing was so intense, I thought I was going to die,” Ewing recalled. Their 6:15.25 put them 2.3 seconds ahead of silvermedal Netherlands.

The 50th reunion began on Friday evening with a sunset boat ride on Lake Lucerne for the crew and their significant others, with hors d’oeuvres and white wine. After the cruise, many stayed up to continue the conversations in the hotel bar.

Saturday was the memorial row on the Rotsee, where the members of the Lucerne Rowing Club kindly supplied a racing shell and a coxswain. CONTINUES ON PAGE 65

In the final-only, the USA rocketed out to a near-length lead and never looked back.

The 1974 World Lightweight Champion crew. Bow: Scott Baker (Harvard ’72), 2: Joe Gaynor (Princeton ‘70), 3: David Harman (Harvard ‘71), 4: Eric Aserlind (Wisconsin ‘75), 5: Ralph Nauman (MIT ’74), 6: Dick Ewing (Yale ‘74), 7: Mic Feld (Penn ‘74), Stroke: Rick Grogan (Harvard ‘75), Cox: John Hartigan (Penn ‘64).

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| VOLUME 32 NUMBER 03