Rowing / crew hook

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How about high stat/top ranked students who row but are middle of the road and not recruited? Does it add any bump at all as an EC? Our DC loves rowing, wouldn’t give it up, it’s taking so much of her time and she wont be recruited. She is top of her class in a top private and I’d rather she skips it or just row at a club once a week (instead of now 5-6 days a week in season) to get more rest. Varsity sport is not mandatory at her school. I understand she loves it but don’t think it’s worth getting less sleep to row so much if there’s no admission upside.

You know, I wondered this and it really doesn't seem to matter more than any other extracurricular if you are not recruited. My son has teammates who have national medals (Stotes, HOTC etc) but are not recruits and they did not have unusually good admissions last yr or get into their ED schools this yr. They're great kids and it did (and will) all work out but they had no top20 bump or anything like that. We're debating the same with my sophomore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:By the way, how does one get recruited as a coxswain? Do erg times still matter if you're not going to be rowing?

Rowers often get recruited and money. Coxswains rarely get money, even if recruited.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The D1 rowers I know in heavyweight are almost all 6”5+ (closer to a 6”7 average), while lightweight was closer to 6”-6”3. But those lightweight boys were encouraged to do crazy things / starved themselves for weigh in and that always seemed so rough. They spent so much time rowing, I had no idea how they had the energy for classes.

D1 rowing is intense. Though you may get money, the athlete is working extremely hard every single day for that team!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don't always have to be 6' or even decent athletes....a few petite kids get recruited to be coxswain.

How petite for boys/ men’s crew is petite enough for coxswain?

Actually I think girls are more likely to cox for a boys boat than a boy cox for a boys boat. At least it seems that way at the high school level. It’s awesome to see a tiny girl absolutely bossing around 8 huge boys.

High school: A cox can be of either gender for either boat. But there are minimums.

For girls, if you weigh under 110, they will give you a sandbag of the difference.

For boys, it’s 125, also sandbagged if under.

You can weigh more, but coaches really don’t want extra weight that can be avoided.

This info is a few years old. Curious if the rules have changed recently?

For the IRA schools (Division I), and I'm fairly sure that it applies to DIII schools too, any coxswain in a men's boat has to weigh at least 125 pounds. If the coxswain weighs less than 125 pounds, then he or she hsa tocarry enough weight to get the coxswain's total up to 125. For women's boats in college, the weight is 110.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The D1 rowers I know in heavyweight are almost all 6”5+ (closer to a 6”7 average), while lightweight was closer to 6”-6”3. But those lightweight boys were encouraged to do crazy things / starved themselves for weigh in and that always seemed so rough. They spent so much time rowing, I had no idea how they had the energy for classes.

D1 rowing is intense. Though you may get money, the athlete is working extremely hard every single day for that team!

This. It's a lifestyle and kind of a lonely one for some as you do it at the expense of other parts of college. A friend's kid was just sharing about this. I guess this is the case with all or most athletes but crew seems especially early and time consuming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our private HS always has about 7-8 Ivy rowers. Rugby gets many too.

The rowers are all tall--the recruits (males). A lot of kids got phased out of it be end of HS. Of course, except for the cockswain.

A few notes--

The vast majority of kids who row in hs are not getting recruited for college rowing. As a PP said, many HSs in the DMV have crew, often with several boats for boys and several for girls (as in teams of 25 or more for each gender) and very few of them go on to row in college. For D1 colleges, boys generally are 6'3" or taller (usually more like 6'5") and girls usually top 6 feet. D3 might be ok with dropping down an inch or two in height, but it's just hard to be competitive at the collegiate level without enough reach. And then, of course, the kid has to be really good. By junior year, the student has to be in one of the better seats in the top boat. Finally, this isn't football or basketball. A coach may have a couple or few spots where he or she has some real pull and can get in kids who likely wouldn't get admitted through the regular process. But there aren't very many spots that really are hooks, and thus most kids getting in on their own even if the coach puts in a good word. Two other points: lightweight crew and club crew usually get no special consideration in admissions. And there is a lot of competition now for spots at some colleges from international students who are often on the junior national teams from their home countries. The majority of Harvard and Yale men's crews are from UK, NZ, Switzerland, and Australia.

Bottomline is (at least for a kid with height in the top 1%), going with rowing instead of soccer probably gives your child a greater chance of being recruited in college, but it's still a narrow path there, especially if you want it to be a "hook" into a better school.

Thanks. Good summary.

[Anonymous]

What about DII schools? Why do people always talk about DI and DIII but never DII?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The D1 rowers I know in heavyweight are almost all 6”5+ (closer to a 6”7 average), while lightweight was closer to 6”-6”3. But those lightweight boys were encouraged to do crazy things / starved themselves for weigh in and that always seemed so rough. They spent so much time rowing, I had no idea how they had the energy for classes.

D1 rowing is intense. Though you may get money, the athlete is working extremely hard every single day for that team!

This. It's a lifestyle and kind of a lonely one for some as you do it at the expense of other parts of college. A friend's kid was just sharing about this. I guess this is the case with all or most athletes but crew seems especially early and time consuming.

It has a very high dropout rate...though honestly, the high academic sport dropout rate is high in general.

Approximately 30% of college athletes will quit before completing four years of athletic eligibility, according to a study at Brown University. It is generally higher in sports that don't attract much student fan interest and/or are considered fairly isolating socially. Crew fits the bill because you are traveling some distance to train, the training is time and physically intensive, and you won't get many students coming to watch races.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about DII schools? Why do people always talk about DI and DIII but never DII?

There just aren't as many, and crew is pretty heavily concentrated in DI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don't always have to be 6' or even decent athletes....a few petite kids get recruited to be coxswain.

How petite for boys/ men’s crew is petite enough for coxswain?

Actually I think girls are more likely to cox for a boys boat than a boy cox for a boys boat. At least it seems that way at the high school level. It’s awesome to see a tiny girl absolutely bossing around 8 huge boys.

One of my rower's female friends was a solid lightweight rower in high school. Now she's a cox for a DI boys' team. She's probably about 5'3" and certainly no more than 115 pounds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about DII schools? Why do people always talk about DI and DIII but never DII?

DII schools are very random. Go look at the list of DII schools and if you have ever heard of even 5 of them, that would be surprising.

They are allowed to give athletic scholarships and most people consider DII as a way to grow as a player and then transfer to a DI, but it's not the end destination.

I am also fairly certain there is no D2 rowing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, rowing is a massive hook because all the top universities have programs and yet very few high schools do (as most are not located near a body of water that will allow for training and the boats, etc are expensive).

That said, rowing recruiting has become more competitive and by-in-large the kids getting recruited to the elite colleges these days won the genetic lottery: the 3 girls i know this year (Princeton, Duke, Stanford) are 6'+ and the boys (Stanford, Princeton) are 6'5"+.

Both of my kids have rowed crew for all 4 years of high school, and I can tell you with all confidence, that almost ALL of the high schools around here have a crew team -- although, it's usually not considered a "school sport". Rather it's a "club sport".

Almost all of the schools in MoCo (both public and private) row out of either the Bladensburg Boathouse, in Bladensburg, MD and row on the Anacostia River, or row out of The Anacostia Boathouse and also row on the Anacostia River or the Thompson Boat Center and row on the Potomac.

My kids go to/went to WJ and row/rowed out of the Bladensburg Boathouse, which is only about 30 minutes by bus.
The kids leave on the busses right after school and we pick them up back at the school when the bus returns at 7:30pm.

It's an amazing sport, and it becomes like a really tight family (a very big family, as we have 80-100 rowers on the team every single year at WJ). They train 6 days a week together, all year-round (it's a year-round sport if you chose it to be, but my kids don't train in the winter). Every Friday night, a different parent will hosts the Friday night pasta "carb-up" at their house, and everyone brings something, plus we travel for regattas together almost every weekend, and we have a whole team of parents who travel to the regattas exclusively to feed the kids breakfast and lunch every weekend -- it's super impressive.

You don't have to have THE most athletic kid to row crew, as it's truly a team sport.
They want hard work, dedication and team spirit. Contrary to what people believe, it's actually a leg sport, but an arm sport. So it's OK if your kid has skinny arms, lol.

If your kid wants to play a sport, but doesn't know where to start, but they know they want a team/family environment where they will totally find their tribe (all kinds of kids row crew, they don't fall into one particular demographic) then crew might be for them!

Every school has a "learn to row" week at the beginning of each season (they also invite the incoming 8th graders).
Send your kid to that and let them try it out for a week for free!

They'll make lifelong friends and memories, and I know I don't have to tell you how great it looks on a college application. 😉

Sounds great! Is any one boat house better than another ? If your high school does not have a crew team can you independently organize your own crew? How does it work?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about DII schools? Why do people always talk about DI and DIII but never DII?

DII schools are very random. Go look at the list of DII schools and if you have ever heard of even 5 of them, that would be surprising.

They are allowed to give athletic scholarships and most people consider DII as a way to grow as a player and then transfer to a DI, but it's not the end destination.

I am also fairly certain there is no D2 rowing.

There is D2 rowing, but only at a very small number of schools.
https://www.ncaa.com/sports/rowing/d2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, rowing is a massive hook because all the top universities have programs and yet very few high schools do (as most are not located near a body of water that will allow for training and the boats, etc are expensive).

That said, rowing recruiting has become more competitive and by-in-large the kids getting recruited to the elite colleges these days won the genetic lottery: the 3 girls i know this year (Princeton, Duke, Stanford) are 6'+ and the boys (Stanford, Princeton) are 6'5"+.

Both of my kids have rowed crew for all 4 years of high school, and I can tell you with all confidence, that almost ALL of the high schools around here have a crew team -- although, it's usually not considered a "school sport". Rather it's a "club sport".

Almost all of the schools in MoCo (both public and private) row out of either the Bladensburg Boathouse, in Bladensburg, MD and row on the Anacostia River, or row out of The Anacostia Boathouse and also row on the Anacostia River or the Thompson Boat Center and row on the Potomac.

My kids go to/went to WJ and row/rowed out of the Bladensburg Boathouse, which is only about 30 minutes by bus.
The kids leave on the busses right after school and we pick them up back at the school when the bus returns at 7:30pm.

It's an amazing sport, and it becomes like a really tight family (a very big family, as we have 80-100 rowers on the team every single year at WJ). They train 6 days a week together, all year-round (it's a year-round sport if you chose it to be, but my kids don't train in the winter). Every Friday night, a different parent will hosts the Friday night pasta "carb-up" at their house, and everyone brings something, plus we travel for regattas together almost every weekend, and we have a whole team of parents who travel to the regattas exclusively to feed the kids breakfast and lunch every weekend -- it's super impressive.

You don't have to have THE most athletic kid to row crew, as it's truly a team sport.
They want hard work, dedication and team spirit. Contrary to what people believe, it's actually a leg sport, but an arm sport. So it's OK if your kid has skinny arms, lol.

If your kid wants to play a sport, but doesn't know where to start, but they know they want a team/family environment where they will totally find their tribe (all kinds of kids row crew, they don't fall into one particular demographic) then crew might be for them!

Every school has a "learn to row" week at the beginning of each season (they also invite the incoming 8th graders).
Send your kid to that and let them try it out for a week for free!

They'll make lifelong friends and memories, and I know I don't have to tell you how great it looks on a college application. 😉

Sounds great! Is any one boat house better than another ? If your high school does not have a crew team can you independently organize your own crew? How does it work?

There are youth rowing clubs that have kids from multiple high schools. But if you want to start a rowing team at your high school that is very possible. FCPS has crew at 16 high schools but is in the process of expanding it to all the high schools over the next few years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about DII schools? Why do people always talk about DI and DIII but never DII?

DII schools are very random. Go look at the list of DII schools and if you have ever heard of even 5 of them, that would be surprising.

They are allowed to give athletic scholarships and most people consider DII as a way to grow as a player and then transfer to a DI, but it's not the end destination.

I am also fairly certain there is no D2 rowing.

There is D2 rowing, but only at a very small number of schools.
https://www.ncaa.com/sports/rowing/d2

It's interesting...many of those schools are D1 or D3 for their other sports, at least the high profile sports. UC Davis is mostly D1 and Barry is mostly D3.

I believe there are other requirements in terms of what facilities you have and their capabilities in order to be considered D1.