about rowing

Crew is an expensive activity due to the cost of equipment and the scarcity of sponsoring facilities. Unless persons learn to row in high school or college, or are part of an established private club with a rowing program, there are few opportunities to learn. In an effort to change this situation, many communities across the United States are establishing programs where members of the community, regardless of economic status, are given opportunities to learn about and participate in the sport of rowing.
Rowing builds strength, fitness, self-confidence and dedication. As a low impact sport, any student can join and work towards being a national athlete.

A Brief History of Rowing

Rowing is quintessentially American. Beginning with informal competitions among boatmen in New York Harbor in the early 1800s, competitions among American rowing clubs were well established by the 1830s. The first college rowing club was established in 1843, and 1852 saw the first Harvard-Yale boat race, which has been held in all but 13 of the 150 years since, making rowing America’s oldest intercollegiate sport.

By the 1870s, rowing had already taken its modern form. Numerous rowing clubs sprang up along the Harlem, the Charles, the Schuylkill Rivers, and elsewhere in the US. Americans created the key technical innovations in boats and oars, including the sliding seat and locking oarlock. The long, light racing shells in Thomas Eakins paintings of this period are only little different from today, and largely concern the substitution of modern plastics, composites, and alloys for ash, cedar, and bronze. But as American as these innovations were, even more American and more important was the development of rowing as a club-based sport open to all comers—professionals, artisans, laborers—and women. Although the participation of women in US rowing has blossomed in the last 20 years, American women were part of club rowing from the start. The oldest continuous US women’s rowing program—Wellesley College—was begun in 1875

American club and university rowers, including great crews from the University of Washington and the University of Wisconsin, have dominated international and Olympic rowing for much of the 20th century. Competition from European, and Australian, New Zealand, and other Asian teams has intensified over the past several decades, and Europeans in particular have been the most innovative in boat design.