The NCAA News - News and Features

April 28, 1997

Making a BIG SPLASH

With success and tradition already part of its lore, women's rowing hopes its new NCAA championships simply make the sport bigger and better

BY GARY T. BROWN
Staff writer

A tradition is about to be born in a sport that already has a rich heritage.

In just a few weeks, tradition-rich rowing will add its newest and perhaps its most important ritual -- the NCAA National Collegiate Women's Rowing Championships.

People in the rowing community hope it's a stroke of genius.

Rowing has thrived for years -- particularly at the club level -- but a boost in women's varsity teams triggered the opportunity for the first regatta with "NCAA" on the sculls. And even though teams have staged important regattas with the determination of a "national" champion at stake before, this event might create even bigger waves.

"Having the caliber a championship that it looks like we're going to have is great publicity for the sport and a big reward for the athletes," said Janet Harville, who coaches the women's team at the University of Washington, traditionally a national power. "It's not just window dressing, but more recognition with the NCAA stamp on it."

Harville is no stranger to big-time regattas, having taken teams to the prestigious Pacific Coast and Pacific-10 Conference championships and having brought home several trophies. She's also a member of the fledgling NCAA Women's Rowing Committee, which was charged with staging an event that would add to the sport's previous grandeur.

"You want this championship to be a great spectacle and a first-class regatta," she said. "But on the other hand, we've been doing this already and working just as hard; hopefully now there will be more recognition for the time and effort that we've put into this sport."

Protecting existing events

One of the committee's challenges was to make sure the luster of the existing events was not tarnished. Committee chair Barbara Chesler, senior woman administrator at Yale University, said the committee tried to incorporate the traditional regattas into the championships selection process.

"Most regions have a major regatta," she said. "In the East, it's the Eastern Sprints and the Dad Vail; in the West, it's the Pacific Coast and the Pac-10s. And we didn't want schools to be precluded from going to those regattas. We made a list of qualifying events and most of those regattas are on it; it's not an automatic qualification but the results from those regattas will be heavily looked at."

The inaugural NCAA championships will bring 296 competitors (a minimum of 38 from Divisions II and III) to Lake Natoma in Sacramento, California, where California State University, Sacramento, will host an event that will send several four- and eight-women crews home with NCAA hardware for the first time. And the NCAA will be picking up the tab.

"Previously, the Greater Cincinnati Sports and Events Commission ran a championship regatta in Cincinnati," Chesler said. "But there was no way to qualify for that -- it was more by invitation. And schools went based upon whether they were invited and whether they could afford it."

While the sport certainly has gained per diem and transportation, there are those who feel that some of rowing's traditions have been chipped during the move to a new level.

For instance, some regattas may not be as appealing now for schools due to the number of club participants. Given the importance of head-to-head competition in the championships selection criteria, racing against nonvarsity teams may no longer be a coach's first choice.

A coach also may be reluctant to travel to the Henley Royal Regatta, a glamorous and previously traditional excursion to Great Britain that is now restricted because of NCAA bylaws regarding foreign travel.

Even shirt-betting, a 70-plus-year ritual of crews wagering the shirts off their backs, is under scrutiny now that the NCAA is the sport's coxswain.

'Adjustment period'

"There is an adjustment period that requires understanding by both the NCAA and a sport that has not been affiliated in a national collegiate structure," said committee member William Jurgens, athletics director at the Florida Institute of Technology. "Granted, there will be a loss of certain opportunities to do things that have been traditional -- be it shirt-betting or traveling to Henley or any number of things that now are under NCAA guidelines."

Another problem is that many schools sponsor men's and women's rowing programs. Now that only the women are wearing the NCAA label, programs are faced with a balancing act. In addition, the creation of a National Collegiate event rather than separate championships in each division has left some programs on the outside looking in.

"I'm all for the NCAA championship," said Washington College (Maryland) rowing mentor Mike Davenport. "But the problems are, one, we have two sports that have been very closely tied together -- men's and women's rowing -- and now there's a drastic difference because men's is not NCAA and women's is; and, two, we have a combined championship and not a Division I, II or III championship.

"We've got a lot of smaller colleges that thought going NCAA would be great because it would put us on a level playing field -- and now suddenly we see that we're really not on a level playing field."

The latter may be a challenge that time will iron out. Currently, 83 schools sponsor women's rowing, and 51 of those are in Division I. It may not be long before there's enough growth for a split. Thirty-two schools since 1993 have added women's rowing, and the feeling is that more are on the way.

The task of balancing an NCAA women's team with a non-NCAA men's team, however, may be a boat of a different color.

"Going NCAA had a positive impact on the women's team," Davenport said. "But it's caused a few problems between the men's and the women's teams because we require the men's team to follow the NCAA rules. And one thing that's cropped up right now is this long-standing tradition of betting shirts.

"I had to tell the guys we can't bet shirts anymore. They said why not? I said because it's against the gambling rule. They said well, we've been doing it for years, why can't we do it anymore? I said because you'd be gambling and you'd be declared ineligible and you'll never be allowed to have children. And they said oh, OK. So there have been a couple of tough things."

Positives outweigh negatives

Already, though, most feel that the positives tip the scales. Even different constituents are agreeing. Jurgens and Davenport -- athletics director and coach -- concur that bringing at least the women's program "in-house" is a good trail to blaze.

"I think it has made life much easier," Jurgens said. "It has developed some conformity and structure to the sport of rowing from an administrative point of view that improves it significantly. You now have institutions recognizing rowing as an NCAA sport, thus giving it a little more credibility in the sports circle."

"It's great in that it will bring us more into the realm of the athletics department and be more professional," Davenport said. "From an administrator's point of view, going NCAA makes it easier to ensure people are in compliance.

"I think some athletics directors have seen rowing as this pariah out there -- 'What the heck is this thing?' they say. 'You have all these people, you need all this money, and then you do it so far away from campus -- what do you guys do out there, fish?'"

Chesler believes the championships may be the ace for a sport that hasn't had a trump card in the past. As more schools reap the benefits of participating in an NCAA championship, schools that currently do not sponsor the sport may be swayed into adding.

"It certainly will draw as the championship grows," she said. "And more and more schools will add women's rowing and bring it even more to the forefront. From there it will be a domino effect, like anything else.

"The amount of time these women put into this sport is incredible. They train at such a high level and put in so many hours; I think it's wonderful that they're going to have an opportunity to be recognized at a national level."

That's how traditions are born.