When I started JRN (or Junior Rowing WordPress as it was and is sometimes known), I had no conception of how long it would last nor how far it would go. To me, it was a momentary escape from the pressure of exams into a hobby that had stoked my interest levels from curiosity to outright obsession. It was just a passion project; a labour of love; a way to share my enjoyment and excitement for a sport that was chronically undervalued and underrepresented beyond the confines of our community.
A decade later, JRN is now something that I firmly believe has a purpose. We do not pretend to be perfect, and we do not pretend to have all the answers. What we do hinge upon is that same joy, energy, and enthusiasm that I channelled into my first-ever previews, except now the power of those words are extrapolated 20, 30, 40 times over by a team brimming with knowledge and know-how.
We have grown beyond recognition into a platform that serves the rowing community and strives to be better, bolder, braver in our coverage of a sport that teeters on the brink of a commercial and cultural precipice. The future of rowing is uncertain, but JRN will always encourage growth and participation as our core principle.
The path to today has been littered with milestones but a few to call out: our first addition to the JRN writing team in 2014, our first commercial partner in 2015, our first on-site regatta coverage team in 2018, our first foray into podcasting in 2020, our first leadership team in 2021 and a record-breaking year in 2022.
2023 is nearly halfway done but we’re on track to break all existing readership, engagement, and content records that JRN has accumulated over the past ten years – and by a considerable margin. We’re primed and prepared for another decade supporting and serving the rowing community and at the heart of that is our eagerness to always learn. Under the stewardship of an astonishing team of editors, writers, podcasters, social media gurus and young leaders, we are going to take JRN to the next level.
The list of people to thank runs into the hundreds – from those who helped lift JRN off the ground in its infancy to those who propel it to new heights every single day. There is perhaps no better place for us to celebrate a decade of JRN than Henley Royal Regatta – my favourite week of the year and an event that JRN has been involved with for much of our lifespan. With just two weeks to go until the flag falls on opening day, we’ll be there covering every crew, every stroke, every margin, and every victory on the climb to rowing’s highest peak.
And we wouldn’t have it any other way.
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