February 7, 2012
| So You Want to Major in Rowing Advice on Selecting a College Rowing Program that Suits Your Needs |
| By Olwen Huxley |
| From the 1997 American Rower's Almanac |
| As high school student planning to continue-or begin-rowing in college, you may be struggling with the decision of where to apply for college. High school students entering their senior year are preparing to make decisions that will directly shape the next four years of their lives, and they are rarely allowed to forget this fact. The pressure to get good fall semester grades and squeeze in the extra extracurricular activity for the benefit of application forms can be distracting at best and traumatic at worst. How rowing is going to fit into the big picture of your four years in colleges is the subject of this article. For those of you who plan to row in college, it will provide some background information and guidelines on how to think about your choices so you can apply to programs that are compatible with the level of athletic competition to which you aspire, as well as maximize the academic and social benefits of higher education. Make no mistake about it, college is about education. Although, in the broadest sense of the word, learning to be a better rower could be included in this maxim, you are in college first and foremost to increase your knowledge of things generally, and your major in particular. In the long run, repeatedly sacrificing the quality of your studies in the single-minded pursuit of your sport is inappropriate to this time of your life. In college you should be broadening, not narrowing, your experience. Such single-mindedness would also be detrimental to your future, whether it be graduate work or a job, and it will not necessarily make you a better rower. If you have aspirations to make the national team, there is time for development over summer vacation or after you graduate. Development takes persistence and time. You or your parents are paying a lot of money for you to go to college, and during those four years it is important not to max out in one area. The rick variety of experiences you can have in college may not be matched again in your lifetime. Rowing, however important it is to you, is only one of them. If rowing is important to you in selecting a college, you should take the time to do two things: (1) formulate a clear idea of what you want from your college rowing program, and (2) research the rowing programs at schools that suit you most academically, so you can determine which schools can meet all your requirements. Note that you may want to try to choose your colleges first on their academic merits, then their athletic ones. Whether your academic record is strong or weak, your interests scientific or artistic, your rowing stellar or mediocre, there is a school for you. This can get complicated by the addition of determining factors such as location and cost. In answering the question, "What kind of crew program do you wish to be involved in?" A certain amount of subjective opinion is involved in judging how good a rower you are, how good you want to be, and how good you could be. You may want to consult your high school coach on these questions, since he or she can take an active role in assisting in your quest for the perfect rowing program, if not the perfect college. First, you coach will be able to provide a candid assessment of your ability and potential as a rower. Second, coaches can provide letters of recommendation, which are good supporting material for college applications. Third, since most of them rowed in college, they have a personal knowledge about the world of collegiate rowing from which you can benefit. Some of the high school coaches I know take an extremely active role in ensuring that those rowers who wish to continue rowing go on to appropriate collegiate programs, from writing letters of recommendation and maintaining collections of promotion material from dozens of colleges crew programs, to working closely with parents to make sure applications are filed on time and essays are properly spellchecked. This brings me to the subject of what an appropriate program is. "Appropriate" is not a question of mere ability, but also one of inclination. The oft-repeated mantra of college being the best years of your life is true because there is so much to do while you are there. Some students who are recruited for a sport can arrive at their school and drop out of their chosen sport for any number of reasons, ranging from crew burnout to the discovery of the wonderful world of a double major in theater arts and pre-med blochem. No matter how good you are at rowing, it doesn't necessarily mean that this is what you want to do. You may want to play intramural soccer instead. You may not want to compete as a varsity athlete, settling instead on small schools that have club programs that spend more time socializing and fundraising than training. Coaches in every sport wring their hands in frustration over gifted athletes who don't care, but you should row because you want to, not just because you are good at it. There is nothing wrong with being a noncompetitive, recreational rower. However, the top-level college crews, inundated with freshman athletes in the fall, and entrusted with a mission to do as well as or better than the year before at national and sprints, often enforce certain height and weight requirements, erg scores and other fitness tests as hard-and-fast means of filtering out noncompetitive individuals. In these programs you are going to find yourself competing directly for spots in the boat with some very tall, strong people. Being cut from the team under these circumstances can range from being extremely painful to being a huge relief. Avoiding that painful scenario is where your clear-minded self-assessment and the opinion of your coach (and hey, you parents may have some useful advice too!) will best serve you in selecting colleges. What do you want in the next four years? If you would prefer to channel most of your competitive side into something other than rowing, but remain in the sport and have fun, club-level collegiate programs or less die-hard varsity programs are the place for you. However, if you pull a good erg and move boats well, look forward to the last 500 of a race more than Christmas vacation, are willing and able to defend your seat against all (or most) comers, and love to row more than life itself, then the die-hard programs are waiting! Four years of college can be cripplingly expensive. If you have been a successful high school athlete and have made it clear when applying to college that you wish to continue rowing, there is a chance, depending on the importance of the rowing program to the school, that you will be actively recruited. This means the coach of the rowing program will make an effort to contact you, send you information about the collegiate crew, and encourage you to apply. If you apply, the coach may be able to pull strings to get you accepted. Once accepted, you may be eligible for financial support by virtue of your being a rower. Not all schools offer athletic scholarships, which is why doing your research on financial aid is crucial. For example, in the Ivy League, no athletic scholarships are offered internally; financial aid is offered on the basis of need. However, Ivy League schools will strive to enable all accepted students to pay for their education. When finding out where you can get athletic scholarships for crew, perhaps the best place to start is at the college itself. Contact the athletic office and the financial aid office (the two do not necessarily communicate smoothly, so don't expect one to know everything about what the other has to offer), explain your situation, and ask if they can help you. Financial aid officers and the scholarships administrators in the athletic department answer this kind of question every day, so they should be able to give you basic information over the phone and mail you the rest, or direct you to the right people. Again, talk to your high school coach, who will know where your predecessors have gone and which people received funding. Your high school guidance officer is another useful resource, since it is his or her job to get into the college of your choice and help you find ways to pay for it. Another place to do research is the World Wide Web, which, if you have access at home, school or through your library, has an interesting array of sites geared specifically for the aspiring student athlete. I suggest searching under the keywords "athletic scholarships" to begin with or go to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Web site at http://www.ncaa.org/ for information on regulation of varsity collegiate athletics, in particular the recruiting and funding thereof. The NCAA Guide for the College-Bound Student Athlete is available on-line or by mail and is a useful resource. You can reach the NCAA directly by phone at 1-800-638-3731. Finding a college that meets your intellectual and athletic aspirations and financial situation may seem like a daunting puzzle, but persistence and research can lead to the answer. With help from your coach, parents, guidance counselor, and the colleges themselves, you should select the right college for you.
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