2023 marked a very successful year two for the IRA Regatta's new D3 Men's National Championship: the field in the V8 event grew to eight schools this year, a 2V event was added, and--with Adrian, St. Lawrence and Wesleyan earning bids for the first time this year--ten schools have now raced for the championship in its two year history.
Williams became the first back-to-back D3 National Champion and won the inaugural 2V event and D3 points trophy, but the other story we tracked over the IRA weekend was the larger impact of the new championship on all of the programs in the D3 space. "It's raised the bar of all our programs because you finally have a season ending championship," said Williams head coach Marc Mandel.
"Before this, a Division Three program could come to the IRA, battle it out and perhaps sneak into the third final or row in the fourth final. That was great experience, but having the season culminate in a chance to win a championship, that's just something that's in the back of your mind all season long.
"So it adds more meaning to the full season and then you can't discount three more weeks of rowing together which, in division three with the limits on training, that's almost half of the spring season. For us, the guys are through exams, they're out of school, it's warm, the waters flat. We just get really, really good work done and have fun together. So I think that's really what this D3 Championship means to us."
Phil Carney, whose Wesleyan team qualified for the first time this year, and collected silvers in both events, agreed:
"This Championship's been great for D3 Men's rowing," he said.
"We've sitting on the sidelines for however many years that our women's team has been very successful and going to the NCAA quite a lot. So our season is ending and their season is going another week, two and a half weeks, or three weeks even, sometimes, and that's extra training time and more competition. It just gives the kids the opportunity to get better. So that's been a really big thing.
"Additionally, within an athletic department, ours in particular, it just brings a lot of credibility to your efforts at the end of the season, because they know it's a Division Three championship, and it's very similar to what's happening for the other sports."
Carney called it "disappointing" not to earn an invitation to the first D3 Championship last year.
"We ran into, we ran into a lot of issues last year, from injuries to illness. We just came up short but, in retrospect, that really lit a fire in you guys this year to get here. And it was well worth it. They've done a great job preparing and working really hard all year."
Carney sees this Men's D3 championship as being similar, in both scope and effect, to what the NCAA D3 Championship has done for women's teams in the division.
"It is very much the same as what the NCAA is doing in terms of selection and the caliber of the teams who are coming in. I think will happen, as you saw with the women, it's just going to grow, as we go along here. We've gone from seven [crews] to eight and adding the 2V this year was a terrific change. The opportunity for the second boat guys is great, and for the development of the team over three more weeks. We're really freshmen and sophomore heavy. There's five freshmen in my varsity boat. So they're just getting a little bit more time on the water and getting to be collegiate rowers."
For Bates head coach Peter Steenstra, who runs both the men's team and the Bates women's which has won 5 NCAA D3 titles across 16 appearances, including the 2V event, which makes the IRA closer to a full team opportunity, is a game changer.
"The big addition now is the JV," said Steenstra. "That is such a big piece of the puzzle because it now gets another nine people really invested in this postseason. Normally everyone's heading home by now. Graduation happened last weekend. So that alone has been an adjustment, getting the men's team at Bates to gear towards this entire May training system and get into the first week of June.
"We've been doing it for a few years [and bringing a boat to the IRA] and of course COVID obviously caused a little bit of a hiccup in that development but the point is that now the guys coming in know that this is something we want every year, as opposed to early on when we were [first] able to come to the IRA. Back then, it was just, Alright, who wants to do it? Because guys have jobs, the seniors are graduating and all that kind of stuff.
"At Bates, we've been very fortunate to have that example right in our boathouse. They've seen the women's team do [a postseason] for 16 years straight. We don't automatically assume we will get an NCAA bid. We know that we have to earn that right, but it is something that the women's team can certainly all look forward to. Then, having that additional month, and you add that over the course of four years? Now we just added four months of rowing and we only we get so few to begin with [in D3]. Especially at Bates, with us usually iced in through all of March and sometimes halfway through April."
Williams' Mandel has also seen impact on the general perception of D3, and what it can offer to athletes out on the recruiting trail.
"I definitely think people are becoming more aware of D3 and the IRA is a huge reason for that," he said.
"In talking to other coaches, you start to hear more from prospective students who didn't know about some of our programs before or the opportunity to race for this high level championship.
"I think it takes a student who really knows what they want [to row at our programs], because there is that period of time in D3 when the coaches aren't involved in the training because there's that offseason. But the athlete ownership that's fostered in that time is really unique."
IRA Commissioner Gary Caldwell, a long-time D3 coach himself at Tufts, helped shepherd this D3 event into being, as we looked at last year ahead of the first championship.
Caldwell noted that this event for D3 men filled a need that was created, in part, by the expanded opportunities created by the NCAA's D3 Championship on the women's side.
"It's clear that there's been a gap in recognition of men's varsity D3 programs ever since the NCAA split into three unique championships [for women's rowing]," said Caldwell.
The D3 Championship at the IRA addresses that and, what's more, has been a source of significant growth for the IRA as an association, according to Caldwell:
"Once the NESCAC [Conference] okayed attending this championship, that immediately more than doubled the number of member [schools]. Then we were able to attract membership from other associations, utilize the AQ concept for the championship, and we had a very successful run up last year, Caldwell said about the first championship in 2022.
"Over a period of the last six or seven years," he added, "we have gone from three D3 schools at the IRA and now we have 24, which is almost 40% of the association membership, and they have something very meaningful now."
Caldwell sees the D3 Championship as win-win addition for both the schools involved and the IRA Regatta as a whole, pointing to:
"The success that we had last year with the varsity event, the signup of the entire Liberty League roster of schools with one exception, and adding a second varsity eight race to essentially have an equivalent opportunity to the one that the IRA presents for the lightweight men and lightweight women.
"As you can see, it's gone over really well," he said.
Williams, of course, became the first back-to-back D3 National Champion this year and, for context, you would have to go back to 1897 to see the first school go back-to-back as IRA Champions in the Varsity Eight event which started the whole regatta. Back then it was Cornell, and the IRA was just in its third year. Thanks to the willingness of the Stewards to give the D3 schools their own championship to contest, there is a whole new history of D3 champions to be written in the years ahead.
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