Class Format:
This class will consist of 3 indoor and 3 outdoor sessions. The first indoor session will start at 7:30 pm and end by 9:00 pm on Wednesday, March 13 at the College of William & Mary Rowing Club’s Ergometer Room in the basement of the Student Recreation Center. Here is a W&M campus map, the Rec Center is Number 424 in Grid A-1 of this map. The second and third sessions will be held at the same time and place on Wednesdays March 20 and 27. These indoor rowing lessons will provide the new rowers an introduction into the sport of rowing and help them develop a proper rowing technique using rowing machines (ergometers). We will use the ergometers to focus on proper rowing technique, not cardiovascular, strength or endurance training.

The outdoor sessions will be held from 9 am through 12 noon on Saturdays April 13, 20 and 27. We will meet at the Tack Family Boathouse, located in the Chickahominy Riverfront Park. (Here’s a map to the location).
These lessons will be in 4 or 8 person rowing shell, depending on class size, and we will be on the water for about 2 hours. There are no caddies in rowing, so rowers will carry their boat from the racks on which they are stored down to the dock, go for a row, and carry the boat back up to the racks from the dock after the row (the distance is about 100 meters from boathouse to dock). Then we clean the equipment to make sure it’s in good shape for the next row.
Portions of the indoor and outdoor sessions will be videotaped and rowers given personalized, constructive critiques of their rowing style. Again, the focus of these classes is to learn to row, so while competitive rowing is perhaps the most physically demanding sport, we will be taking it easy and working on style, not working out for strength and speed.
Upon completion of all three water sessions, participants are invited to row at scheduled club rowing practices through the end of June at no additional cost. This enables participants to continue to practice rowing and join in the camaderie of rowing with other more experienced rowers. You even get a chance to pull hard and row fast, should you like to try that. Should a participant elect to join our club, the $75 paid for LTR class is credited toward annual dues.

Before you row:
Participants will need to complete and sign three forms prior to the water practice. These include a standard USRowing Release and Waiver of Liability, a brief medical history form and a swim test verification form. For the swim test, participants 18 or older can either demonstrate or verify they can swim a minimum distance of 75 feet, tread water or float for 5 minutes, and don a personal flotation device (life vest) while in the water. Youth rowers (17 years or younger) will need to perform this swim test and have a witness such as a parent, guardian or certified life guard co-sign the verification form. All required forms will be emailed to participants prior to the class, and participants are requested to bring the completed forms to the first indoor session (along with a check payable to the “Williamsburg Boat Club” for $75).

What to bring:
For indoor rowing sessions, any suitable athletic attire that you’d wear to a workout at a public gym or recreation center is fine. We don’t have access to lockers, so arrive dressed to row.
For outdoor sessions, participants should wear not wear loose or baggy clothes as these may get caught in the boat while rowing. We recommend wearing compression shorts or sweat pants and a t-shirt, sweat shirt or light jacket (dictated by the temperature that day). Do not wear bracelets, watches or rings, as these tend to become uncomfortable while rowing. Please bring sunscreen, a hat, sunglasses (consider wearing a strap for glasses), socks, and shoes you don’t mind getting wet (the dock we use floats on water and submerges a bit when launching and recovering boats). Rowing shoes are attached inside the boats, so bring socks to wear in the boat. If you need to carry any medicines, such as an asthma inhaler, bring those along and the coach in the safety launch will hold those for you. While on the water, we will have breaks to get some fluids, so bring at least a liter of water or sports drink.

How to Prepare:
For indoor rowing, you can watch these videos available from Concept II, the manufacturer of the rowing machines and oars:
The Rowing Stroke
Getting Started
Common Errors

To read some background information on rowing, we recommend you visit and explore this USRowing website.

Essential Summary:

This program is for young men and women aged 14-18 years.
The cost is $125 for one year if you have no rowing experience, $100 if you do.
This is a team sport.

Overview:

Our club’s youth rowing program is for young men and women aged 14-18 years. Learn to row classes are planned throughout the spring and summer of 2009. Specific days and times for these classes can be found at this link.

The focus of the youth rowing program will be on learning proper rowing technique. If we have enough interest, we plan to participate in some informal scrimmages and formal regattas this spring and summer with other youth crews from other rowing clubs, so participants will have the opportunity to race against their peers if they so desire.

Participants with no rowing experience will need to take a learn to row (LTR) class, which costs $100. Once the LTR class is completed, participants may join our club, and $75 of the LTR costs will be credited toward annual club dues (which are $100 per year for a youth rower). In other words, if you have no rowing experience, it will cost $125 for LTR lessons and membership in the Williamsburg Boat Club for one year. There may be nominal additional costs involved if attending organized regattas during the year (a typical race fee per rower is $10).

In addition to youth rowers, we will need youth coxswains. A coxswain (pronounced “cox-un”) is the person who gives the rowers instructions and commands and steers the rowing shells (boats). A cox’n typically weighs less than 120 pounds and has the personality trait of liking to be the person in charge. Coxswains also get a 50% discount on club membership dues.

The Sport of Rowing:

Rowing is perhaps the ultimate team sport. Successful rowers have outstanding endurance and physical conditioning and are able to synchronize their individual body movements with the other rowers in the boat such that every rower’s oar enters and leaves the water at the exact same split second. The movements of a world-class crew sprinting at full speed looks like they are hardly making any effort as they smoothly glide across the water in perfect unison.

A good place to learn a bit more about rowing is at the USRowing‘s “New to Rowing” sections. I encourage you to explore this website to learn more about the sport.

The term “crew” is often used when talking about rowing. This is commonly misused, so I’ll try to clarify the truths of the names of the sport. “Crew”, as a noun, can refer to either the people in a specific high school or collegiate rowing boat or the entire sport of rowing in high school or college. The term “crew team” is redundant and is not properly used. After college, the term “crew” is no longer used to describe the sport or people in a boat, and “rowing team” or “rowing club” is proper. In the sport of rowing, “crew” is never, ever properly used as a verb, i.e., one does not “go crewing”, rather one would “go rowing”. When in doubt, the noun “rowing team” or verb “rowing” will always be correct when describing the sport.

Rowing is truly a sport which can be done throughout one’s lifetime. Our club has members in their 70s and they still row. Rowing was a rich man’s sport a generation ago, and new equipment is pretty pricey, but men’s and women’s crew is found at many colleges these days. With the increase in rowing at colleges and clubs across the country, used rowing equipment is available at reasonable prices, which encourages even more rowing clubs to form. However, rowing will not become a varsity sport in the local high schools in the foreseeable future. So if there is to be an organized junior rowing program in our local area, it seems this will best be done as a club sport that is not affiliated with the high schools.

We don’t know if we have a “critical mass” of interested youth to sustain this program, as we currently have only five youth members of our club. If you are interested in more information about our program or would like to join our crew, please send an email to either:
wbcyouthrowing@gmail.com, or
bobmorrison77@gmail.com

Regards,
Bob Morrison
Head Coach, Williamsburg Boat Club
757-846-6860 (C), 565-7946 (H)

About me:

I rowed for the US Coast Guard Academy from 1973 until I graduated in 1977, and was the captain of the lightweight crew my senior year. I’ve been on crews that won our events at the Head of the Charles Regatta, New England Championships and Dad Vail Regatta (all of which are major collegiate rowing events). I joined the Williamsburg Boat Club in 2004 and am currently certified as a Level II rowing coach by USRowing.

10/11/08 – Head of the James (No info on website yet, you may want to check this site for more information).

10/26/08 Head of the Lafayette There will be a Halloween Costume contest for the Best Dressed Boat off the launch dock.

11/1/08-11/2/08 Head of the Occoquan

For more detailed information please see the James River Adventure Games website.

For more details:

History of the WBC Website
0.3:
While the previous (version 0.2) website looked a little “nicer”, it was a PITA (pain in the a*) to update – requiring direct access to the files for hand editing. But it worked, and, few changes were really needed.
Late last year, around Thanksgiving, 2007, I started to look into using WordPress, a very popular weblog package. Normally this is used for “blogs”, however, it was easy enough to change it to allow for using it as a web content management system. Between then, and, today, I started moving the content over, but, I took my time. On Friday (3/28/2008), I finally felt like it was ready for primetime, and, so I emailed the Club to test it out. I received a lot of feedback (Thank you!), all positive, with some indicating a couple of things I left out. After some minor changes, I figured it was ready, so I decided to do the switch today.
So, this morning I got on to do the switch, and, wouldn’t you know it – WordPress came out with a major upgrade to the software on Saturday. Figuring now is the time, I upgraded the software to the latest version. After some testing, I did the switch – and here we are.

0.2:
It wasn’t until spring, 2007 that I started working on moving the website over to a new location, hosted by William and Mary. After getting the content in place, I did some minor cosmetic updates to our website.

0.1:
Henry Griggs of the Juniper Rowing Club graciously hosted our website for years.

[editors note: This is version 0.3, because us tech-types rarely start on the number 1, we also like to put things in reverse chronological order.]

Hope y’all like it…
chris

A big thanks to Tom for spending a whole lot of time rerigging the Mary Lewis 4 to make sure it is safe and for all his efforts organizing the boathouse and helping the club to have all the necessary equipment ready to go for the season. Thanks Tom!!!

We are scheduled for another on the water coxswain training on Saturday so please sign up if you can make it. We need rowers to fill the 8 and potential coxswains to practice their skills. Remember we can”t row if we don’t have a cox.

Also try and make it to the Multi club picnic at New Quarter Park on Sunday. It sounds like a real good time and a chance for us to showcase our club and check out all the other outdoorsy clubs in the area.Hope to see you this weekend!!

Stay well,

Gail Peck WBC secretary and reminder of all good things

***** Don’t forget annual club dues are now DUE! You can bring your check down to the river if its easier and give it to one of the officers.