UMBC Crew Turns Ten

 
UMBC rowers cheer on their fellow teammates at a recent regatta.

UMBC Crew Turns Ten

 

Every weekday morning at 5 a.m., while the majority of campus is still sleeping, one of UMBC’s most hard-working yet under-recognized sports teams can be found on the water near the Hanover Street Bridge, starting their daily practice.

Like other UMBC athletes, Crew team members sacrifice a great deal of personal time and energy for their sport while representing the University well against regional, national and international rivals. But UMBC Crew does so as a club sport with no scholarships and a modest budget.

Rowing is the oldest intercollegiate sport in America, with roots tracing back to 1854, but it has only been around at UMBC for a decade. The team got its start in 1992 as a joint program with the University of Baltimore (UB), but then purchased four shells (the preferred term for the sport’s signature sleek boats) from UB when their program was phased out.

Since then, UMBC Crew has developed dramatically. UMBC now owns nine very competitive racing shells, including one named after UMBC’s president, the Dr. Freeman A. Hrabowski, III. The team practices year round, working in afternoon training sessions three days a week on top of the early morning practices. UMBC shares a boathouse located in South Baltimore’s Middle Branch Park with crews from Johns Hopkins and Loyola universities as well as the Baltimore Rowing Club.

An increasing number of students are drawn to crew as not only a great way to stay in shape, but also as a sport with a rich history and a deep spirit of camaraderie. There is no “bench” in crew, i.e. every member is matched with teammates of similar strength and size so that everyone rows at each regatta (race).

The UMBC program is always one of the top third of thirty programs in the mid-Atlantic region. The team competes against nationally-known universities like Army, Michigan State, Drexel, North Carolina, Virginia Tech, Penn State and local powers like Washington College, Johns Hopkins and Loyola. The Crew team travels as far as Boston and Philadelphia to compete, and attends a summer training camp in Clemson, South Carolina each year.

UMBC Crew’s four-person coaching staff is one of the largest and most talented in the region. Head Coach Jim MacAlister is joined by assistant coaches Evan Rea, Jennifer Simpson, and Renee Foard. Rea and Simpson are both UMBC graduate students, and Foard is an alumna and former UMBC rower. The coaches are proud not only of their rowers’ history of winning medals, but also the team’s average GPA of 3.6.

Rea epitomizes the dedication and passion of UMBC Crew. Recently, in the midst of an eight-mile row in the rain, he said, “I love this sport. How many people can say they woke up and saw something like this today? It’s beautiful.”

The team has four more regattas scheduled for the fall, including this weekend’s Occoquan Chase at George Mason University, and then resumes competition in February for the spring season.

“Crew is unusual among sports in that men and women practice together, use the same equipment and more importantly cheer each other on,” says Lou Cantori, the team’s faculty advisor and a professor of political science at UMBC. “They are a genuine team of brothers and sisters.”