Does anyone have 1st hand knowledge of or experience on the Smith Rowing Team? Is it difficult to make the team? My daughter is a varsity rower at her high school and she very much wants to row in college. She is only 5’5" so D1 schools are out and she’d prefer to be at a smaller school like Smith.
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Only the Smith coach can answer these questions…has your D reached out the coach?
Not yet. She is not really ready to engage in the college search at that level yet so I’m trying to help her come up with a curated list.
Is she a junior in HS? If so she should be contacting coaches now, and cast a wide net if she wants to row in college. Can her HS coach be of help?
email should include her height, weight, erg times, current team, gpa and test score (if available) Friendly introduction with a bit about herself and showing her interest in learning more about the team. Lots of club teams at smaller schools too. Plus you can check rosters and look at the height range - really varies by program and coach.
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She is a sophomore and she is worried that her erg times are too slow to share now. She is working hard and getting faster but her 2K time is in the mid 8’s now.
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I’m no expert on whether she should share her erg times, but I know someone who will row at Smith next year. She recently posted an 8:05 2k erg time as a senior. She’s about 5’8”.
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She has plenty of time - she can wait and start contacting coaches Fall of jr year.
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@Peppapig1 My niece is in similar situation, sophomore, interested in rowing in college, she is about 5’4", strong built, not sure about D1 schools for the same reason (although those schools recruit a lot of girls from her club and school teams), she still wants academic rigor - have not thought about Smith, glad I saw your post!
remember coaches love a rower turned coxwain and that opens up opportunity on men’s teams too.
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I have a lot to learn about this sport, as my own D23 was a musician, and I am a rowing auntie here now. Are there any platforms, podcasts or books I can educate myself with? TIA!
I am sure you can find info on YouTube and also US Rowing website. We really learned about it by watching regattas and volunteering at the high school regattas. Talking to the more experienced parents from my daughter’s rowing club and even meeting with the coach to get an intro are all ways to learn. Our club coach did a rowing 101 presentation every Fall for new families.
Read the book and see the movie - Boys in the Boat - a good way to get a handle on the hard work culture.
In my experience, crew athletes are also strong students. My daughter’s college team (D1 - competitive) and the other crew teams at the school are the 3 top performers in GPA across all sports at the school. They are academic, going for summer internships, participating in research with professors, busy - so a pretty driven group. They are also fairly tall - with the girls hitting 5’8" and more - I am unsure about the height on D3 teams and I believe the practice schedule are significantly less plus I know several D3 rowers that were able to take a semester to study abroad - not in D1. Coxs are usually 5’4" and under 120 lbs. A great coxing resource is former Olympic coxswain - Mary Whipple The Ninth Seat. She also runs coxing summer camps. Beware of college camps, as a lot are coached not by the college coach and they just hire out former rowers - would give your child a chance to live on a campus and meet others from across the US - but Stanford, Princeton etc camp does not = recruiting.
My daughter is D1 and that means 25-30 hours a week at practice/commuting (includes Saturday) plus classes. Travel training trips cut her winter holiday break and no spring break - as they are also training. She loves everything about it and never complains about all the work - we tried to push her towards D3 - but she was all in for the D1 commitment.
We love the community around this sport and still don’t know much except to cheer 
Don’t want to derail this thread - as I know if is really about Smith and I know nothing about their team 
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Thank you so much! I appreciate it! And I am curious about the Smith College Team too!
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To my knowledge, Smith’s recruitable erg times are in line with the NCSA article on the topic, where I think you could safely put Smith somewhere between Tier 2 and Tier 3 (and working to move up). Can they make exceptions, as they may have for @pilate’s connection - possibly, but not likely at 5’5". With a little creative Googling, which you can do as well, I found a recruit from a few years back who was 5’8" and had at least a 7:48: similarly, just a photo of their boat at HOCR makes it pretty clear that there aren’t any 5’5" rowers in that boat, unless the coxswain is 4’9" - which a bit of research shows that she isn’t.
Not to say it’s impossible - just setting expectations for when she does contact coaches, which as @coffeeat3 suggests, can wait until Fall of her Junior year (and arguably even later for D3 teams). Also not saying she can’t walk on to the team - you asked if she could row there, not if she could be recruited to row there. If she applied to Smith without recruiting support and was accepted, even if the coach didn’t support her as an athletic recruit, they could give some guidance onto their practices with walk-ons. Rowing teams often appreciate walk-ons with experience in the sport.
Good luck!
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No knowledge of rowing but a friend’s D was a walk-on on the Smith lacrosse team. She’s doing well and liking Smith socially and academically.
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Smith Crew was just ranked #1 in the NEWMAC preseason coaches’ poll:
https://smithpioneers.com/news/2024/3/6/crew-rowing-picked-first-in-newmac-preseason-coaches-poll.aspx?fbclid=IwAR3n2xvoMZiI5zPgoEEA6JEIMbBOahM57zb0tPbUrKzg4XTJXODadcqDY7I
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