D3 College Rowing, particularly small LACs?

College Search & Lists
1

My top school remains as Middlebury, while Bowdoin and Bates are up there as well. I plan on applying ED to one of these LACs in the fall.

I’m being recruited by D3 coaches for BASKETBALL by a few coaches. I am being recruited the hardest by a coach from a school not on this list that I am somewhat interested in. Shockingly, I received an email from a D3 varsity ROWING coach who coaches in MA at a LAC that I’m not enormously interested in. The email was ambiguous and probably automated, but I was still curious.

I have NEVER participated in rowing in my entire life. I emailed the coach back and very honestly conveyed that I have never rowed and have never really considered it. The coach responded this morning and wrote:

"M***********,
Most college rowers don’t pick it up until college, if you like working out, training and being part of a team, it might be perfect for you. Hopefully ____ academics are of interest and you give it a shot! Email me back with any questions!

Coach ********"

I love to stay fit and work out, and I’ve been on teams my whole life. Rowing never occurred to me, but after talking to some relatives who rowed in college, it sounds pretty enticing.

So, here are my questions:

Would I be foolish to email the rowing coach at Middlebury? (I’m not really sure what to say/ask, as I’ve never rowed before)

Say I did email the Middlebury coach… would they potentially be able to help me through admissions (preread), and be a hook for my ED application?

Would it be ridiculous to reach out to the coaches at Bowdoin, Middlebury, or Bates since I’ve never rowed, even though I’m a multi-sport athlete and enjoy working out?

Any and all comments/answers are greatly appreciated! Thank you!

2

If you might be interested in D3 rowing, definitely email the coaches. Just say what you said here – you’re an athlete that’s never rowed but it sounds interesting, and ask if they’d be interested in you. Depending on how competitive the team is, I’d bet most D3 rowing coaches are always looking for more athletes.

At those very selective schools, it’s unlikely that the coach has much pull with admissions; so you shouldn’t count on this being a “hook” – rather do it because you are genuinely interested in potentially rowing.

Another benefit of making contact is that the coach can be very helpful as you visit campus (introducing you to team members, etc).

Good luck!

3

For what its worth, my soccer player also received some cold-call emails about rowing. The rowing programs may get the list of students who have filled out questionnaires or attended camps etc. in a different sport, and just throw out the possibility in case something sticks. We understood there was no admissions advantage, it was just a coach looking for athletic kids who wanted to keep up with sports.

4

Many smaller programs have quite a few walk on rowers with no experience. Many basketball players are tall and athletic, just what a rowing coach is looking for.

5

High school rowing teams probably exist, but they aren’t common. So it would be normal for colleges to recruit athletes who have never rowed before.

A lot of college rowing is actually on “club” teams, outside of NCAA. For example, there is currently no such thing as NCAA men’s rowing, at any level. At some schools (like Williams), men’s rowing may still be treated as a varsity sport, even though it is not NCAA. At other schools, men’s rowing is a club team with second-class status in terms of status and funding.

The NCAA does recognize women’s rowing, but many schools still have non-NCAA club teams. In NESCAC, there is NCAA women’s rowing at Bates, ConnColl, Colby, Hamilton, Trinity, Tufts, Hamilton and Williams. The other NESCACs – which are Amherst, Middlebury, and Bowdoin – have club teams.

So if you contact the coaches at Midd or Bowdoin, be aware that both men’s and women’s rowing are club sports at these schools, and not NCAA. As a club sport, rowing may or may not have the same status and funding as the varsity NCAA programs, and the coaches may or may not have the same degree of pull with admissions. I don’t personally know about the status of club sports at these schools, but it’s something you might want to look into.

6

At most of the NESCAC schools, men’s crew is a varsity sport, not a club sport. But the governing body is not the NCAA. (They have a governing body, though - it was around before the ncaa.) This may impact how it counts for title ix, but it would likely not change the experience.

And most do recruit kids who have rowing experience. In this sense, recruiting helps with admissions. But they generally need more rowers than they can recruit, so they also look for athletes who want to give it a whirl. At many schools, this does not happen until early fall so doesn’t help in admissions. It is not at all unheard of for someone to take up rowing in college and be very successful.

Look at the team websites and rosters at the schools that interest you and you’ll get a sense of how many kids in the program migrated from a different sport and how many had experience. Bates, btw, has a strong program and just finished renovations on its boathouse.

There is a rowing recruiting thread here on C C. Definitely geared to more high power programs, but you’ll find pretty knowledgeable folks there.

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One way to make a rowing coach pay attention would be to pull a low erg time (erg = ergometer, a stationary rowing machine). That along with general fitness and coordination and a large wingspan (generally the same as your height) tell a coach you have potential to be a strong rower. You might want to see if you can get access to an ergometer to see what kind of 2K time you can produce. A coach wouldn’t necessarily expect you to finish within the range of rowers who have been working at the sport for a while, but a low initial time would bolster your recruiting application and remove a little uncertainty for the coach.

Is there a weekend “learn to row” program anywhere near you? That would be a good way to test out the sport. If you can’t get on the river anytime soon you may want to spend a little time on a rowing forum. Rowing is an interesting sport, one that demands a lot from the athlete emotionally as well as physically. At my kid’s school it was labeled “the cult”. I always say it’s the only sport where if you’re bleeding and throwing up you know you’ve done a good job!

You sound like the kind of cross-over athlete rowing coaches like. You may want to ask rowing coaches at your target schools directly what they’d want to see from you as a potential rower. Often the answer for recruiting in rowing is much more numerical than in other sports, e.g., “A 6’4” wingspan and a sub-6:40 2K erg time".

8

For example, check out the Athletics home page for Middlebury, which is one of the schools of most interest to the OP:
http://athletics.middlebury.edu/landing/index

Under “Teams”, there are direct links to 14 “Men’s Sports” and 15 “Women’s Sports”. We can assume that these are Midd’s “official” varsity sports. But neither of these lists includes rowing. To find Middlebury rowing, you have to go to a third column, labelled “Other”, and click on “Club Teams”. This brings up a list of club sports like rugby, ultimate frisbee, quidditch, and rowing.

I’m sure that the club sports at Middlebury are fun, and that they are an important part of the college experience for many students. Just be aware that they probably don’t have the same degree of status or funding as the varsity sports at Midd, like football, basketball, or lacrosse (or even squash, which is non-NCAA).

9

And at Bowdoin and Bates, it’s a varsity sport. OP, you’ll have to look at each school’s program to figure this out. It’s also an unusual sport in that they race fall and spring, so to @sue22’s point, you really have to love it.

10

Many rowers do start in college. What the coaches are looking for is tall athletic students who enjoy training hard. Since you are a good basketball player, you might fit the rowing profile.
Back in the 1970’s the Harvard crew coach would stand at the entrance of the freshman dining hall at the beginning of the school year, check out the new students, and chat with the students with the body build he felt would be good for rowing. “Have you ever thought of rowing? Would you like to give it a try?” The Harvard and Radcliffe crews were world class competitors back then. Several members of both crews rowed in the Olympics. I believe that nowadays the Harvard men’s and women’s crews still compete at the highest level.

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I know of one D3 program that gets a handful of recruits and fills the rest of its boats exactly this way. And in the last 10 years, two of those "never rowed before college " kids ended up rowing for the U.S. team. It’s refreshing in this age of professional 8 year old athletes!

Boys in the Boat is a great book about this…

12

The OP sounds like a good prospect as a walk-on. To answer his original question however, because rowing is a club sport at Middlebury the Midd coach wouldn’t be able to help with admissions. The coaches at Bowdoin or Bates could give him a boost with admissions but IMO it’s extremely unlikely they’d use a spot on a student who hasn’t proven himself as a rower or even proven that he’d stick with the sport beyond the first practice.

@macd123, if you’re really serious about trying to become a recruit you may want to do a summer program such as the one run on the Charles River by the Harvard coaches. This program and others like it not only teach both the basics and more advanced techniques but they have downtime recruiting information seminars. You’d enter the recruiting sustem very late but you might be able to sneak onto a coach’s final list.

13

Thank you, everyone! I have gained so much more insight into D3 rowing. I will be looking into summer rowing programs. Thanks again!