The Oarsman Award to be Rowing’s Heisman

Football has the Heisman, men’s college hockey has the Hobey Baker, and starting this year, The Intercollegiate Rowing Coaches Association (IRCA) will name “The Oarsman,” a new award recognizing “the individual who has made their team greater through tireless dedication, transformative impact, and uncompromising excellence . . . a tribute to those rare athletes who achieve greatness not only through personal excellence but through a lasting commitment to their team, their sport, and the values that define true champions,” according to the IRCA, which is the association of men’s rowing coaches, founded in 2020 as stewards of men’s rowing to promote the coaching profession and enhance the collegiate student-athlete experience.

“This is something that we’ve been talking about since the inception of the IRCA,” said Princeton coach Greg Hughes, co-president of the CRCA.

“In rowing, where we tend not to identify one person out of a crew—and at the same time we have a cox award—we absolutely do need to do this. Chris Clark really is the brains behind us and this is something that he’s talked about for 15-plus years, that we need to bring rowing more in line with other collegiate sports where they do recognize outstanding talent and record and career. It is designed to recognize what they have done as a college oarsman and with their team as a college oarsman. It’s not dissimilar to the Heisman.”

“I’ve looked enviously at other sports during my years in rowing, at all the trappings of normalcy they had: coaches associations, multiple year-end awards, All Americans, and studente-athlete awards,” said Clark, Wisconsin’s Director of Rowing and a co-founder of the IRCA.

To be eligible for nomination, a candidate for The Oarsman award must be an academically-eligible rower from an IRCA school in his third or fourth year as a student-athlete. Head coaches of member schools can name one nominee, with the IRCA board of directors responsible for narrowing the list to 18 finalists comprised of eight Division I or II heavyweights, five lightweights, and five Division III finalists.

“Rowing in a race is a team sport, but we are also acutely aware every crew has those unyielding guys that the entire program is utterly dependent on to will the boat to victory. We can learn who these extraordinary athletes are. The wider sport—let alone the world beyond—knows little about the individuals driving that speed. We all want to know, and those guys deserve all the credit coming to them.”

A group of nearly 200 selectors include current and past coaches, media representatives, Olympic-medalist alumni, and team captains will then vote for the winner, be announced Friday, June 20, following the announcement of finalists on Monday, June 16.

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