College rowing in the United States
[1] In the 2018–19 school year, there were 2,340 male and 7,294 female collegiate rowers (on 57 and 148 teams, respectively) in Divisions I, II and III, according to the NCAA.
[2] The sport has grown since the first NCAA statistics were compiled for the 1981–82 school year, which reflected 2,053 male and 1,187 female collegiate rowers (on 48 and 43 teams, respectively) in the three divisions.
In the 1996–97 season, most women's intercollegiate rowing programs elected to join the NCAA as a "Championship" sport.
These include top club teams such as Virginia and Michigan as well as lower level varsity programs such as Hobart and St. Joseph's University.
Universities that have never had a men's team have added women's rowing to the athletic department and are providing funding and athletic scholarships for the expensive and demanding sport, contributing to a noticeable increase in the success and competitiveness of many collegiate women's rowing teams.
[12] When Canadian sculler Joseph Wright began coaching at Penn in 1916, he discovered that he had a number of smaller but excellent oarsmen.
However, many of the smaller colleges have limited sized programs and simply field open weight boats, which include rowers who would qualify as lightweights, and many larger Division I-A universities, cognizant of Title IX issues, have limited the size of their men's programs.
However, on the east coast, most Ivy League and EARC schools have well-populated, excellent, fast and well-funded men's lightweight teams.
The lightweight men's events at the Eastern Sprints and the Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championship (IRAs) are fiercely contested.
[15] Since the NCAA Rowing Championships does not have a lightweight event for women, a select number of these teams (e.g., University of Wisconsin) are eligible to compete at IRAs.
At the 2012 IRA Steward's annual meeting it was voted to repeal the ban on freshmen competing as part of their varsity squad.
Rowing is one of the few collegiate sports where athletes practice year round and compete during both spring and fall.
These longer races are part of the foundation for the spring season, building the rower's endurance and mental toughness.
This race includes rowers of all ages, abilities, and affiliations and features the best college crews in competition with Olympic-level athletes from the United States and other countries.
Many northeastern colleges have a winter training trip to a warmer state such as Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee, or Texas during either winter break or spring break to give students extra time on the water while the local rivers and lakes are frozen.
Sprint races begin with all teams lined up and started simultaneously, as opposed to the time trials in the fall.
The Intercollegiate Rowing Association, known as the IRA, was founded by Cornell, Columbia, and Penn in 1894 and its first annual regatta was hosted on June 24, 1895.
In 1982, a Harvard alumnus decided to remedy this perceived problem by establishing a heavyweight varsity National Collegiate Rowing Championship race in Cincinnati, Ohio.
For men's rowing the Dad Vail Regatta in Philadelphia is considered the national championship for smaller college teams unable to compete at the IRA standard (similar to Division III or I-AA in other sports).
The IRA also awards the Ten Eyck Trophy to the university amassing the largest number of points in three of the four possible eights from each school.
The Atlantic Coast Conference first held a rowing championship in 2000 with Clemson, Duke, North Carolina, and Virginia participating.
[21] The 2005 conference realignment cycle brought two rowing schools into the ACC, with Miami and Boston College respectively joining for the 2005 and 2006 seasons.
Currently seven schools compete in both the Championship Regatta and annual "Double Duals" races consisting of contests between 2–3 Big Ten competitors.
Amid the early-2020s realignment, initially triggered by the announcement that charter Big 12 members (and rowing schools) Oklahoma and Texas would leave for the Southeastern Conference (SEC) no later than 2025 (later confirmed for 2024), Old Dominion returned to Big 12 rowing in 2024–25, and Tulsa was added as a new affiliate at the same time.
[31] The SEC announced the addition of rowing on August 23, 2024 with Alabama, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas as its inaugural programs.
[32] The West Coast Conference first held a women's rowing championship in 1997 with five of the league's eight members at that time participating—Gonzaga, Loyola Marymount, Saint Mary's, San Diego, and Santa Clara.
The participating schools are: Buffalo, Colgate, Delaware, Fordham, Mercyhurst, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, UMass Villanova, and West Virginia.
In late 2008, the rowing programs at the nine schools expressed a common desire to formalize their association in order to enhance the student-athlete experience for their rowers.
Notably, Seattle Pacific is the only school currently in the conference to have not won the DII rowing championship, their best finish being runner-up in 2010 to rival Western Washington.
The Sunshine State Conference consists of six NCAA Division II member schools in USRowing's Southeast region.
