The growth of rowing's popularity in America is demonstrated in new collegiate and high school programs, increased attendance at regattas, and community rowing programs needing new facilities due to overcrowded boathouses. What are the reasons for this surge? Do the costs of rowing programs in colleges have something to do with it? Perhaps rowing is a more affordable sport than the big ticket collegiate sports like basketball and football? Maybe rowing is simply popular because it is fun. I talked to coaches at four universities with rowing programs, and with a representative at US Rowing to get some answers about the costs of rowing, why the sport is gaining in popularity, and to get an idea of the future of the sport.
Costs. I hypothesized that rowing might be a more cost-effective sport than football or basketball for several reasons. First, an economic analysis comparing sports would have to include costs needed to built and maintain an expensive stadium or gym for football, basketball, or hockey along with equipment. This makes a sport like rowing look pretty good. The venue where it is played is usually free. If you examine how many athletes can be involved in the sport, rowing looks even sweeter. With 80-200 athletes on a typical rowing team, there is much more "bang for the buck."
Why do schools offer athletic programs? The simple answer: to offer athletic opportunities to students, create school spirit, and bring in financial revenue to the school. If the only goal was to provide the maximum number of athletic slots to students for the least cost, sports where many athletes can participate (once equipment is purchased) would receive the majority of attention. Track and field, volleyball, and rowing are good examples. In reality, there are many other factors involved. Athletic directors often focus their energy and resources on revenue sports - football and basketball - because they can generate millions of dollars each year, and because they improve the school's public image.
Rowing brings in no revenue for schools, and can be expensive. If you examine it on a cost-per-athlete basis, it appears to be more affordable than other collegiate and high school sports like football or hockey. And the equipment can be used by many team members, in separate competition. Other sports have high levels of individualized equipment that must be purchased each year. But you can't ignore that a successful football or basketball program can generate enough income to support all other athletic programs at a university. A study I came across estimated that a single NFL quality player can generate more than $2 million for the university athletic program, costing them little more than a year of tuition!
Unlike the big ticket sports, rowing is usually funded outside of athletic budgets. Most schools are lucky to get travel money and a place to store their equipment. Some fortunate schools have athletic budgets that purchase boats and other equipment, but most depend on booster, alumni donations, and the athletes themselves to pay for their programs. Just shipping boats to regattas can be a huge expense.
The biggest obstacle facing a school wanting a rowing program is a place to row. A navigable body of water is absolutely necessary. But it's also free. No stadiums to build, no big athletic facilities necessary. The next biggest cost would be for a boathouse, which can be avoided by renting space in existing boathouses, or storing boats at other sites. Advances in technology have created better constructed materials, permitting storage of boats outside. The days of the boathouse steward, and "varnishing parties" for wooden boats have faded away with Kevlar and other plastics. The sport succeeds because the equipment lasts, and can be shared by many participants.
Popularity. In the United States, rowing has grown steadily over the past twenty-five years. Once known best as an "Ivy League" sport, rowing's popularity now extends to high schools and colleges across the nation. Tony Johnson, coach at Yale from 1969-1989 and now at Georgetown University, gave me a good measure of the sport's popularity: the Dad Vail regatta. In 1969, he remembered it having three events, with only four or five college men's teams participating. In 1992, it grew to more than 100 colleges and 26 high schools, with 17 events for both men's and women's teams. Now the one regatta has been split in two. And while he says Ivy League schools still have a great influence and a strong tradition of rowing, "they haven't been dominant for the past thirty years: there is too much competition out there."
So why is rowing so popular? Is it the fierce, competitive nature of the sport? Is it the grueling, physical regimen required to excel? Is it the really cool deltoid muscles that rowers develop? There are several reasons:
The basics are easy to pick up. You don't have to start at age five to row in college. There is an equal playing field that doesn't exist in other sports: in many cases, new members have never before picked up an oar. Steven Peterson, coach at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., says that the beauty of rowing is that it is a simple sport: it requires no "skill," like the sport of ice hockey. A successful rower needs to take time and practice "learning to relax, to use their body and the equipment most efficiently. Ice skating backwards while shooting a puck is a skill. Rowing and running - they are natural body motions."
Crews can field many athletes. College teams usually have more than one hundred people participating, because they don't need to forcibly cut players like other sports. Most schools have varsity, second, and even third or fourth string teams in both the heavy and lightweight classes, depending on the size of the team and the equipment available.
Gender equity. Fielding big teams for little cost means the ability to field big women's teams. To meet obligations for Federal and NCAA regulations, commonly called Title IX requirements, schools are increasingly looking to rowing to take up some of the slack. These equity rules require a balance in number of opportunities for male and female athletes in financial support of sports programs. The NCAA has made only women's crew, an intercollegiate sport complete with scholarships and funding.
It is everyone's sport. Regardless of whether you are big, small, young, old, male, female, rick, poor, White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, disabled, or abled, you can row. There are blind rowers. There are rowers without use of their legs who use fixed-seat boats. U.S. Rowing's Bill McGowan noted with pleasure that crew teams are popping up in inner city high schools, giving many more kids opportunities to compete, and resulting in more athletes of coloring in regattas.
It is a lifelong sport. Unlike other sports, older athletes can continue without debilitating injury. Aging football, baseball and hockey players have a few years after college to play pick-up games before their age surpasses their abilities. Runners can continue, but this sport jars knees, ankles and other joints. Rowing is a smooth, fluid motion, putting little pressure on those trouble spots, and can be enjoyed forever. Ernestine Baer, the famous grandmother of rowing still competes at 88 years old.
McGowan says that the Supreme Court's ruling on Title IX gender equity provisions is the single greatest factor in the growth of collegiate rowing programs today. Because of this, some women's rowing programs are seeing rapid growth. The NCAA sanctioning of women's rowing has created new scholarship opportunities for participating women, while requiring a minimum number of new coaches and staff. It has stimulated some university athletic programs to write a "big fat check" from $50,000 - $1 million to create rowing programs. The four schools I interviewed have strong programs, with women comprising 40-65% of the teams (including novice or freshman teams). While the coaches at Georgetown, George Washington, and Temple University said that women's crew is not a major factor in their schools' meeting the Tile IX requirements, it is at the Univ. of Washington. Coach Bob Ernst says that women's rowing is a big help in balancing participation with men's sports, especially Washington's strong football program, to which there is n female equivalent. Ernst says that women's rowing is critical for several Big 10, Southwest and Southeast requirements. Men's rowing has not been given official status as an NCAA intercollegiate sport.
With the emphasis on fitness and increased athleticism in the 90's, it is no surprise that women have made the sport their own. Parents want daughters to row, to get scholarships and succeed at college. They are doing just that. Each school with an NCAA team can give 20 full ride scholarships each year. Over the next few years, women's rowing programs are expected to surge in popularity creating more female athletes in rowing than ever before. This increase will have a "trickle-down" effect on the sport at all levels. * * * * * * |
