row2k Features
Supporting YOUR National Team
August 26, 2015
Katie O'Driscoll, for Community Rowing

USA Men's 8+ at Aiguebelette World Cup, 2014

The eyes of the rowing world will be turned to the 2015 World Championships set to kick off later this week, and the enthusiastic supporters of Team USA will undoubtedly be among them. Whether feverishly refreshing their Twitter feeds or watching the action live on the World Rowing website, fans of the men and women of the US National Team will be cheering every step of the way, from heat to final, time zones be damned.

Aiguebelette is the highlight of the elite calendar this year, and it’s an important stop on the road to the Rio Olympics in 2016. With less than year to go before the Olympic team is selected, Team USA hopefuls must continue to perform at the top of their game, proving that they deserve a spot on that roster. It’s already been a long journey to even become contenders for those Olympic boats. And despite their physical strength, they can’t make that journey alone. Beyond cheering for the red, white, and blue against the backdrop of a computer screen, what can the rowing community do to support the National Team on their path to competitive success?

To understand how athletes who seek to top international podiums fund such a tremendous dream, one has to look deeper into the different routes they can take to achieve it. When it comes to elite rowing, rowers draw from two pools: USRowing Training Center athletes, and those training at high performance programs in a variety of clubs scattered around the country.

Training Center athletes are invited by National Team coaches to participate in Selection Camps for particular boats, based on metrics like identification camp performance, results at National Selection Regattas, and performance in past international and domestic competition. For the 2015 World Championships in Aiguebelette, the boats that came out of the camp system were the men’s coxless four, men’s eight, women’s eight, women’s quad, women’s coxless four, and the lightweight men’s coxless four as well as the paralympic crew selected for the legs, trunk, and arms mixed four. These athletes are based at the training centers in Oklahoma City and Princeton with the exception of the LTA 4+, which had selection and training camp run out of Community Rowing, Inc. in Boston.

The elite rowers based in clubs around the United States train for World Championship boats that are selected through the trials system. That is, multiple clubs will put their fastest versions of a particular boat class in head-to-head 2,000-meter contests for the right to represent the United States in that event at Worlds, which includes the additional sixteen boats representing Team USA in 2015.

USRowing Training Center Athletes
Most people know nine-time National Team member and two-time Olympian Megan Kalmoe’s blog for “The List,” the cheeky annual ranking she used to publish of hottest rowers on the international scene. Other posts include monthly playlists, introspective posts about her training, and anecdotes about daily life at the USRowing Training Center in Princeton. In April of 2014, she published a post titled “The Truth About My Bank Accounts.” It was decidedly less playful.

In it, she detailed the ups and downs of funding her last seven years of Princeton residency training for the US team. She wrote about the year following her bronze medal in the women’s quadruple sculls in London when she received enough Direct Athlete Support for her performance that she didn’t have to work to make ends meet. She also wrote about the winter of 2014, when an underperformance of a different quad at the 2013 World Championships cost her significant funding, placing her well below the poverty line and in straits more dire than she had ever experienced before.

It was a stark, brutally honest exposition of the hardship, uncertainty, and fear that accompany her and her fellow teammates as they pursue National Team glory at the USRowing Training Centers. “We’re not expecting anything out of the norm,” said Kalmoe. “We eat food, we need gas for our cars, we need car insurance, and have cell phone bills like normal people. But if you’re not making a normal person salary, the little things you think are normal add up, and suddenly you don’t have anything left at the end of the month.” After the post went up, something amazing happened.

“As soon as it went up, people wrote to me saying, ‘Let me send you something. I want to help,’” Kalmoe recounted. “It wasn’t the post’s intent, and at first, I couldn’t believe it, but then I realized—of course—rowers are the most amazing and generous people anywhere."

“These people don’t know me, they don’t owe me anything, and I might never meet them,” said Kalmoe. “But they want to help, and they want to contribute to what my team is doing.”

The overwhelming support Kalmoe found thrust upon her is not a unique experience in the world of rowing. It’s one of many such stories told by elite rowers of the generosity and kindness they’ve experienced from the rowing community.

Funding for many of camp athletes comes from Direct Athlete Support (DAS), an allotment of money the United States Olympic Committee provides USRowing and all national governing bodies that support an Olympic sport. While not all camp athletes receive DAS, many of the criteria that determine camp selection overlap with the determinants of this monetary support, like success at a World Championship, competitive performance during training camps, and 2,000 meter and 6,000 meter erg tests. DAS differs from athlete to athlete, and their funding is reevaluated quarterly. Additional support is also present for athletes like Kalmoe in Princeton, where host families offer up their homes to Training Center athletes, sometimes for years at a time.

Trials Based Athletes
Unlike their compatriots in the camp system, the responsibility of non-camp athletes in funding their journey to Aiguebelette is largely their responsibility. There is a substantial effort by USRowing this quadrennial to help fund these boats given a top performance at select World Cups or the World Championships, but prior to those performances, there is no official channel of support for trials boats, leaving the athletes to figure out on their own how to manage training costs, coaching salaries, travel and regatta fees, equipment rentals, and other basic living expenses.

But the rowing community has a big, collective heart, and is very active in supporting them. Around the United States, community support from clubs like California Rowing Club (CRC), Community Rowing, Inc., Craftsbury’s Green Racing Project, Vesper Boat Club, and the Boston Rowing Federation have made the National Team dream a much more tangible reality for its elite rowers.

“Our communities and our club programs have always been the backbone of USRowing,” said Curtis Jordan, USRowing Director of High Performance. “They have a history of stepping up and supporting their athletes.”

In 2013, Jordan wrote an appeal to the rowing community asking for assistance in getting more athletes on the podium. Citing the financial constraints of the national governing body, Jordan noted the proud past of that altruistic communal support, and was confident his plea would be answered. As an added incentive to the performance reimbursements already in place for non-camp athletes, Jordan promised any non-funded athlete that made an A final at the World Championships would receive “no less than five-thousand dollars, with the final amount determined after [USRowing] receives its grant from the USOC and the National Rowing Foundation in the fall.”

In the two years since that call to action, Jordan is delighted by the community response. “They’ve exceeded our expectations,” he said. “There are several high performance clubs that have really stepped up and done a great job.”

“Especially clubs like CRC whose lightweight double won silver at the 2013 World Championships and are sending the men’s quad to Worlds this year; Craftsbury with their bronze medal at World Cup III, and their men’s double going to Worlds; and Vesper who had success in the lightweight women’s double in Lucerne [at World Cup III]; and the Boston Rowing Federation, too, have all shown the type of depth that community support can create,” Jordan said.

“The things we do on the National Team would not exist if it weren’t for the rowing community,” said three-time National Team member and seven seat in this year’s lightweight men’s eight, Dave Smith .

Smith says he’s experienced the generosity of the rowing community throughout his rowing career, starting with his first attempt at making the National Team as a junior rower in 2004.

“My high school coach, Susan Wood, suggested I go for the National Team, and even though my ergs were terrible, started working with me,” he said. “She let me borrow an Empacher single, and eventually found a coach [Christopher Stoer from Pocock Rowing Center] that could devote his time to me .”

When it came time for the Seattle-based Smith to race at Junior Trials, Wood set him up with her East Coast contacts that provided him the opportunity to race. “I ended up getting third, which was way, way better than I though was possible, and it wouldn’t have happened without her help.”

Smith is now experiencing the warmth of the generous spirit of the rowing community once again as he trains for this year’s World Championships. He and the rest of the lightweight men’s eight train out of Community Rowing, Inc., where a support system of host families, complimentary club membership, donated coaching time, and free use of equipment met them upon their arrival in Boston. Smith was stunned at the selflessness of those who gave so wholeheartedly to the effort of the light men’s eight campaign to get to Worlds.

“You can’t really put into words why this is something worth investing time and money into,” Smith said. “But once you’ve experienced it first hand either as a rower yourself or as a parent of a rower, you understand that urge to want to coach or help other people in some way find that joy of being out on the water and working together.”

How Can I Support Team USA?
While much of the rowing community is not able to be directly involved with hosting or supporting Team USA athletes simply due to their location, there are many avenues to offer much needed support.

One choice is to donate to one of the high performance clubs hosting a selection trials boat or directly towards a specific qualified crew. Most trials boats competing at the World Championships each year have some form of online fundraising page set up, either through Kickstarter or the athlete-focused RallyMe.

Another option is to donate to the National Rowing Foundation, which directly supports athletes striving to make the National Team. The NRF can be likened to the charitable arm of USRowing, allocating the donations it receives strictly for athlete support.

“Unfortunately, our athletes don’t get any government support like other international teams,” NRF co-chair Marcia Hooper said. “The more athletes the NRF can help support in training, and the more well-trained boats we can help send to international competition, the more we can add to our tradition of winning.”

The genesis of the NRF came in 1966, in recognition that elite rowers needed to travel abroad to see their international competition more than every four years. Nearly a half century later, that same mission still drives the organization. “It’s all very itemized,” said Hooper. “Team development, coaching support, training center support, sports science, rowing equipment, it all goes directly to things that will help the athletes get to—and be successful at—international competition.”

That winning tradition that the US has established comes as a result of the men and women pursuing a sport where, outside of the rowing world, they get very little recognition.

“To support the National Team is to show them they matter: their work matters, their traditions matter ,” Hooper said. “ Anyone who has touched this sport knows what it takes to work at that level consistently, and that it’s to be applauded and supported.”

In the end, the support received by National Team members and hopefuls serves as a direct bridge between the top-most echelons of the sport and the community for which they have been entrusted to represent.

“It makes you feel part of something so much bigger than yourself,” said Megan Kalmoe. “And it makes you realize how much bigger representing the United States rowing community actually is.”

“The team that we’re trying to be can only exist if everyone is a part of it every single day. There is no such thing at the Training Center as an individual,” she said. “It’s a concept that describes our relationship with the rowing community, too: whether they’re helping us out monetarily or in-kind, or sending messages of encouragement that get you through a tough day, we can’t do it without them.”

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