As the summer starts to come into view hopefully there will be a new wave of youngsters taking up the sport, and those who started in September are joining the race circuit for the first time after months of tech and training. These new rowers and races can give coaches a headache, what is the best boat for them to learn and race in? There are a great number of factors that can influence this decision, if there is a squad of nine is an octuple the right move, and in a much larger squad it would be difficult to take out an armada of singles, but may be quite entertaining when they start to capsize. Small boats and big boats all have their drawbacks and positives, and it is a balancing act to try and get the best of both.
Small boats offer the opportunity for independence, upskilling and accountability, if you mess up or lose concentration in a single then you’re going to know about it. Juniors who often row in small boats will find their first races are when they come up next to each other and just gun it. Octuples mean that you can coach more than than one rower at a time, they learn how to move together, and the stability builds confidence. Yet you can sit in an octo and go relatively unnoticed, when doing drills half of the crew will be sat there for a lot of the session. With younger rowers it is also apparent that none want to cox, meaning someone is going to have to take one for the team each outing. There are also other factors to take into account, the weather being key to any junior outing, attentiveness of the rowers, and vindictiveness of the coach.
Many clubs tend to row in coxed quads at j14, this may be due to numbers dictating that octo’s are unfeasible and the quads offer stability and the chance to coach more rowers, it is unlikely that many clubs will be fielding an octo in the summer and the school side of junior rowing seem to have dibs, with some schools having as many as four or five octo’s racing each other, it is a difficult class to break into. Clubs also send out more j14 single and double scullers to races, many of these are into their second or third year of rowing and are much more comfortable in the smaller boats. It is also easier for clubs to send out small boats as they do tend to have fewer numbers than schools. This is not to say that schools don’t send out small boats, but often have to do this alongside big boats, with a small flotilla making its way around the river sheepishly while a few coaches herd them and try their best to give feedback.
The answer, like everything in rowing, is balance. To get a well rounded rower they need to be able to go fast on their own and with a crew, have confidence in themselves and but be a member of a team. Obviously the priority is to get as many youngsters racing as possible and that may mean whack five octuple sculls on the water to a big programme but to others it may be a quad and a double. As long as rowing is enjoyable then the sport will grow, and races are the most fun aspect of the sport. Each boat class will have its positives and negatives at the junior level, the coach has to discover the formula to maximise the positives and reduce the negatives throughout the season, often while being pushed to get results.
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