Performing Like a Pro.

You don’t have to get paid to be professional in how you approach what you’re doing. Many (most?) rowing coaches are under- or unpaid but still approach coaching in a professional manner. The same can be said of student-athletes, many of whom train and compete with a level of dedication, commitment, and skill that professional baseball and football coaches would love to see in their teams.

We’ll let others—most likely the courts—decide what is still amateur about Division I college athletics as student-athletes go from receiving scholarships with a value-in-kind of hundreds of thousands of dollars to receiving NIL payments of millions of dollars.

What is professional about the best rowers and coaches in our sport is their approach to making boats go faster. Whether paid—barely, in the case of most club coaches—or not (like the athletes), the top performers approach our sport with the same dedication, preparation, and purpose as the top paid professional sports coaches.

In the February 2026 issue of Rowing News, Bob Ford, an award-winning veteran sports reporter, tells the story of Vanderbilt Rowing, whose mostly volunteer coaching staff developed the club program into a two-time ACRA national champion. It’s a compelling piece that will inspire even the highest-paid professional coach.

Beyond the world of sports, career professionals like doctors, lawyers, and accountants pursue professional development and continuing education as if their jobs depend on it (because usually they do). In a Coach Development column in the Training section of the February issue, I encourage rowing coaches to attend coaching conferences not only for the formal education but also for the unscripted moments in between sessions that often benefit coaches and their careers most. Failing to develop as a coach is unprofessional.

Also in this issue, Pulitzer Prize finalist Frank Fitzpatrick writes about Canadian Olympian Maya Meschkuleit, who now rows for Texas. There, she’s pursing a master’s degree on a rowing scholarship, after graduating from Yale, which, as a member of the Ivy League, does not grant athletic scholarships.

Amateur these rowers may be, but unprofessional they are not.

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