Rowing Opens Season Saturday vs. Columbia

[bcb96]

http://scarletknights.com/news/2018...ing-opens-2018-season-saturday.aspx?path=wrow

Races start on the Raritan River at 1:40PM. Finish line is in Boyd Park by the boathouse. Girls have improved tremendously under new coach Justin Price. Very excited for this racing season ahead. Beautiful sport to watch if you've never seen it before.

Come support the oldest sport at Rutgers! Many alumni will be back on the banks watching this race.

 

[Bms22]

Mens crew is one of the only programs with an endowed coaching salary and huge alumni support. Too bad it fell to club status as the men were a top 15 presence every year and made the finals at Henley competing against U of Washington prior to being cut. Hope Hobb's has interest in bringing it back because it would only enhance the student experience for some walk-on talent and those seasoned athletes looking to take it to a Varsity program.

 

[bigmatt718]

I could see women's crew being vastly improved this season with our new coach.

 

[Bms22]

Still looks as though we don’t have two competitive eights. Once this happens the second boat will push the top boat. We need some international commits to come over by scholarship but unfortunately the last one was about 15 yrs ago. Hope there is a change coming because some of the fall results showed more of the same so I’m hopefully saying I’m wrong.

 

[zappaa]

Upstream Red Ream.
Go RU

 

[bigmatt718]

Women's crew dominated Columbia today. Outside of women's lax, RU Spring Sports are collectively on fire.

 

[newell138]

THEre is a lot of HS talent in the south jersey and Philly area. No need to go international

 

[Bms22]

THEre is a lot of HS talent in the south jersey and Philly area. No need to go international

Just like all sports for Rutgers you should be getting the athletes in your backyard. Take a look at any of the finalists for NCAA’s and then look at their rosters. Anywhere from 2-7 international athletes. Most of them have been on their home countries national teams for years and they are seasoned. Then you supplement with the NJ athletes and others from NY to fill out boats. Not a secret and the best teams do the same thing. Just takes the time to recruit and coaches that are comfortable (Max) don’t put in the time or effort. Also with our funding catching up this is a must going forward.

 

[newell138]

It will be interesting to see how the new coach does. I believe the womens team is pretty well funded and they really haven't done much at all. My older daughter went there on an OV back in 2012 and they flat out told me they don't look for rowers necessarily but athletes who excelled in other sports but weren't good enough to compete at a D1 level. It didn't make sense to me then and it still doesn't. They didn't offer my daughter any money even though she was on a state champ boat, had a great erg time and was also an all conference cross country runner. She ended up going D3 with a very good financial package and was able to make it to the NCAA's, so it all worked out for her. HS Rowing in South Jersey and in the Philly area is HUGE. Most of the HS's down here in Atlantic and Cape May counties have teams and a fair amount of them like Ocean City, where both of my daughters rowed have 30-40 girls on the team. Go to the Schuylkill on a Saturday in the spring and you will see a hundred high schools all from the local area competing. This is a fertile recruiting area that needs to be tapped.

 

[bigmatt718]

Newell is right. Rowing in Philly and South Jersey is HUGE. Cooper River in Cherry Hill has huge HS crew meets in May and the Dad Veil Regatta on the Schuylkill is one of the biggest college meets in the nation.

 

[bcb96]

http://scarletknights.com/news/2018/3/24/womens-rowing-rowing-sweeps-columbia-in-season-opener.aspx

Results from this weekend's race. It was awesome seeing the crew finish with open water in front of an Ivy League School. Definitely a solid win to kick off the season.

As far as international recruits, Justin has already started adding a few rowers from other countries to the roster who are contributing to the team nicely. He also landed a few transfers from some other B1G schools.

 

[Bms22]

It will be interesting to see how the new coach does. I believe the womens team is pretty well funded and they really haven't done much at all. My older daughter went there on an OV back in 2012 and they flat out told me they don't look for rowers necessarily but athletes who excelled in other sports but weren't good enough to compete at a D1 level. It didn't make sense to me then and it still doesn't. They didn't offer my daughter any money even though she was on a state champ boat, had a great erg time and was also an all conference cross country runner. She ended up going D3 with a very good financial package and was able to make it to the NCAA's, so it all worked out for her. HS Rowing in South Jersey and in the Philly area is HUGE. Most of the HS's down here in Atlantic and Cape May counties have teams and a fair amount of them like Ocean City, where both of my daughters rowed have 30-40 girls on the team. Go to the Schuylkill on a Saturday in the spring and you will see a hundred high schools all from the local area competing. This is a fertile recruiting area that needs to be tapped.

The argument comes right back to money and resources (facilities & coaches). Max was coaching with a slimmed down budget and was paid less but also knew his job was not in jeopardy. We enter the BIG and Hobbs comes along and the wheels begin to be put in motion for an overhaul as well as bringing the budgets in line with other schools (not there yet). I've seen this many times where a coach would like to give a scholarship but can't because they are in fact not fully funded and rather look for rowers/athletes not looking for money. In rowing more so than any other sport the walk on athletes play some of the largest roles and often times end up making the first boat by their Jr/Sr year. You have freak High School athletes that either didn't pursue that sport or didn't get a scholarship to school and need an outlet. Agreed that Philly is next best thing to Boston and it happens to be in our backyard.

As for Dad Vails it's equivalent to the second tiers championships. It's great if you are in a small school but the women want to get to NCAA's which won't happen competing at Dad Vail level. NCAA>Big Ten's> Eastern Sprints>Dad Vails. On the men's side Eastern Sprints may almost be bigger than winning the National Championships.

 

[DJ Spanky]

Mens crew is one of the only programs with an endowed coaching salary and huge alumni support. Too bad it fell to club status

We never should have cut those sports: bringing them back will be far more expensive than if we had maintained them. Which means, I think, that we'll never see them come back.

 

[Bms22]

Agreed. Due to the Title IX restrictions in order to add this sport would require far greater than retention would have. Again alumni support driven by key individuals (Jeff Klepacki ) is supplementing the program. The men use to run their scholarship program out of funds set up by the foundation as men's rowing is not sanctioned by NCAA rather the EARC. Added bonus to not being apart of NCAA is you are still allowed to bet your shirts (Amazing tradition).

 

[29PAS]

Glad to hear crew is still a big sport in South Jersey. Cooper River was a big part of my youth - spent a lot of time there watching the races, er, submarine races.

 

[bigmatt718]

RU Varsity 8 won B1G Boat of the Week. Has to be the first time the team won that award.