In many ways, the start of a new school year marks the reset point of age-old cycles, especially in collegiate rowing. While it may seem far off for current high school seniors, graduation is nonetheless looming and if you have any ambitions about carrying your rowing career to the next phase of your life you must start planning soon. Collegiate coaches and assistant coaches are already on the lookout for next years talented freshman team, and any ambitious high school oarsman or oarswoman should in turn be searching. But what should you be searching for? And how should you examine prospective colleges and universities? What factors do coaches and athletics departments weigh most heavily? These are all questions I will answer in the next few paragraphs by taking a hopeful recruits perspective on what to look for in potential schools and what to do to maximize the possibility in actually getting recruited.
The first thing any hopeful recruit must do when starting the process is honestly evaluating their own personal goals. Many start out with the compulsion to just look up the top teams in their nation and send out emails and film to their recruiters. While this outlook might work for some, even if you do get recruited by these programs there is a significant chance you will not be successful there because their goals do not match your own. Maybe your goal is to have a fulfilling academic experience, but the team itself rarely balances significant academics with performance. Perhaps it’s just the opposite, and the team promotes academic excellence above all else but you crave a more immersive experience. These goals can also be career and geographically oriented. Look up some recent alumni and see if their professional success is something you may want to emulate. Perhaps you find yourself sentimental towards a certain geographic region of the sport, check which regattas they compete in to see if it aligns with your interests. The main point here is that there is more to looking for a team than just the most recent leaderboards, you must also be very honest with yourself when deciding what rowing experience you will get the most out of.
Let’s imagine that you have found an institution or two that seem to have your goals in mind, the next step in a recruits evaluation should be what the team dynamics are and what the university culture is. For team dynamics, you can usually get a good sense by just having a conversation with the rowers themselves. Every team has a slightly different culture so it is valuable to find one that you can see yourself fitting into. You should generally be searching for a team of people that are positive about the team and their future in their own way, whether it’s through professionalism, humor, or friendliness. Another way to get a sense of the team culture is to look at the roster. Check for how big the team is that year and how many are graduating. Generally, university teams have two kinds of years: competitive and developmental. A competitive year may show itself in the roster with a mid-sized to large team with a lot of experienced seniors, this is likely to be a year the coaches will focus strictly on results. A developmental year will show itself in the roster with a small-mid sized team composed mostly of underclassmen, and the coaches are likely to be slightly more patient by focusing on developing their team and improving results over the year. It is very common for a team to have many “competitive” years in a row, or to have many “developmental” seasons consecutively. As a recruit, you should look at the roster for the current year and try to predict what will happen in the next year and see if that aligns with your interests.
Another crucial factor to consider is the institution’s culture. Of course this includes the academics, size, location, all of those that you likely already knew to take into account. Imagine yourself attending the school without rowing and see if you could be satisfied there – after all, there is always the chance you could get injured and get cut off from the sport. If this happens you’ll be grateful that you chose a school for characteristics other than its rowing program. Also examine the athletic departments demeanor towards the rowing program. Check if they have cut any resources to it in recent years, and see how often they advertise or support it. This is a significant factor because a rowing program with the full faith and support of its institution is far more likely to have a stable future that you could be a part of.
Finally we turn to what you as a recruit can do to make yourself more appealing to recruiters. Let’s start with the obvious industry standard numbers: erg times and grades. Many institutions have a program where they will input your erg times and relevant grades and it will provide a likelihood of you being a good recruit, so it can never hurt to make those numbers as good as you can when possible. Now is the time to do some extra work to make those PRs just a little lower, and those grades just slightly hirer. However, these numbers are not always everything. For many teams, as long as you are in the general area of what they’re cutoff is, you have your foot in the door and you have a chance. You can maximize this chance by actually meeting or talking to the coaches or team members. Schedule those meetings or phone calls and make yourself seem as driven and committed as possible no matter the cost. Show up early, ask intelligent but direct questions, and be at least a little polite. A factor many recruits don’t even consider is their parents. Coaches generally want to meet them. When the coaches actually meet you, they won’t be paying attention to how you act, they’ll be watching your parents. Parents can often give away what pressures or lack of pressures the recruit has, and this can regularly predict the rower’s future in athletics– whether the recruit will stay through college or quit. These last little qualitative factors can very easily tip the balance for or against despite your erg times and grades.
For those about to enter into the college search and the recruitment process, it can seem daunting, and it certainly will be. But as long as you know what you’re looking for and roughly how to get it you will find yourself on the perfect team for you. You’re about to start a very long and exciting journey, and if you should happen across this article I hope it helps you along in any way, I wish you the best of luck.
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