From the Editor: A Joy, and Our Reason for Being

One of the great things about writing for Rowing News is that you get to interview the best in our sport, and often at one of the high points of their careers. The end-of-spring championship season is the most important time of the year for youth and college crews, the largest segment—over 85 percent, by our count—of American rowing.

This year’s championships were some of the best ever, by many measures. Collegiate club rowing continues its healthy growth, in terms of both speed and participation, as seen at the American Collegiate Rowing Association’s ACRA National Championship Regatta. Varsity lightweight and men’s heavyweight programs, including Division III, had their biggest year ever at the Intercollegiate Rowing Associations’s 121st IRA National Championship Regatta.

As the only publication covering these events in a glossy full-color print magazine, it’s not only a joy but also part of our reason for being. The three fundamental purposes of Rowing News are to recognize excellence, to inspire rowers, and to enhance the rowing experiences of the community we serve. In this issue’s pages, you’ll see this year’s champions and read some of the stories of how they got there.

Improving—and thereby enhancing experiences in rowing—can sometimes mean delivering frank and constructive criticism. As North America’s independent source of professional rowing journalism, Rowing News proudly delivers.

Racing among the top college crews should, of course, be faster than youth crews, and expectations for the quality of the championship regattas should, logically, be higher as well. But the reality in American rowing this year is exactly opposite, at least when it came to USRowing’s Youth National Championship and the NCAA Women’s Rowing Championships.

The award-winning Youth Nationals (SportsTravel’s 2023 Best Amateur Sporting Event) grew and improved yet again in 2024, attracting 4,058 athletes and 5,507 paying spectators to America’s premier racecourse to crown youth national champions in 41 events. With the continued success of the event, USRowing is setting ever-higher benchmarks of what can be achieved by professionally managed regattas at world-class venues.

The NCAA, on the other hand, despite having full fields of the best trained, supported, and prepared oarswomen in the history of our sport, put on a regatta fully deserving of the blistering critique offered by guest contributor Etta Carpender. While Carpender had the privilege of competing for (and winning, for a second time) the Division I national championship on the water, she and her fellow competitors suffered conditions on shore that fell short of what a national championship should provide.

Today’s college champions are tomorrow’s Olympians, as is the case again this year. As I detail in Big News, the U.S. squad headed to Paris is made up entirely of IRA and NCAA collegiate rowers. The expectation is that our best will race in the best regatta in the world and win at least four medals, including gold.

And you can count on Rowing News to report on it all.

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