The ACRA Championship returns this weekend after two years of COVID hiatus and--if you will pardon the cliche--it is bigger and better than ever.
The same might be said for collegiate club rowing in general, thanks almost entirely to the efforts of the American Collegiate Rowing Association itself, both prior to and then throughout the pandemic, to support its member clubs and provide leadership to grow club rowing.
On the eve of the 2022 ACRA Championship, row2k caught up with three of the coaches who serve on ACRA board, to talk about the challenges of COVID, the return of the regatta, and the state of both the Association and College Club rowing: Orange Coast's Cam Brown, who currently serves as President of ACRA, Bucknell's Dan Wolleben, and Michigan's Gregg Hartsuff, who helped found the organization in 2008.
Excerpts from that conversation follow below, and the regatta itself kicks off with heats on Friday morning, continuing through to crowning the 2022 ACRA National Champions on Sunday in 21 events, from singles and doubles up to eights. The ACRA will be the largest collegiate regatta in the United States this year, with over 300 entries.
You will be able to catch results here on row2k and watch The Rowing Channel's live stream of both Saturday and Sunday's racing here.
Back to Racing
First and foremost, each coach is simply excited to get back to racing the championship:
Cam Brown - "Earlier in the season the ACRA Board sent out a survey to our membership gauging the ability/plans to be able to attend ACRA this season after the difficulties of travel, roster building and fundraising in the past 2 years. We were pleasantly surprised to learn, based off responses, that programs are expecting to bring a similar number of athletes to ACRA as we had pre-covid - over 1700 athletes competing. Certainly it has been an incredibly challenging time for all ACRA programs, and some have been affected more seriously that others - but it is a remarkable display of resiliency and fortitude for coaches and athletes of these teams to have that outlook for the 2022 season. The desire and motivation among our programs remains strong."
Gregg Hartsuff - "This year's seniors are the only class on my team who has rowed at ACRA so we are excited to introduce three classes of guys to the race. Not a single guy on my team has rowed a full season in a varsity eight so it has been a season of learning and we are looking forward to culminating that in Oak Ridge."
Dan Wolleben - "For Bucknell, the ACRA National Championship is our number one focus throughout the year, so having the regatta back is exciting. There is a lot of great racing throughout the spring in the Mid-Atlantic region, but for over two years we've really missed the ability to line up against everyone. This gets us back to national racing. So many ACRA programs race within their region, and then get one or two races out of region against a few new teams. This is the one time everyone comes together. In the varsity 8 alone there are 24 entries, but we haven't seen 16 of them yet this year! Events like this reinvigorate our program and many others. We all get to find out who the best is, and strive to reach that in the future."
Hartsuff - "ACRA was in a position prior to the pandemic to overtake the Dad Vail as the largest collegiate regatta in the U.S. This year, the first year after the two pandemic seasons lost, we have done that. Our entries are near 2019's numbers."
In addition, the entire Association has become more organized in the interim as well, officially becoming a 501c3 non-profit during the pandemic:
Brown - "We've been trying to do this for years and we finally got it done this year. Becoming a 501c3 organization just shows the development of the association and the progress we've made over the years. Having that legitimacy now to our program, that's a great step forward within the association."
The Challenges of COVID
COVID has been challenging for every kind and level of rowing program. For the ACRA schools, however, COVID not only put a halt to the 2020 spring season--as it did for collegiate varsity programs--but it kept many ACRA teams shut down well into the 2020-21 school year. Why? Because many schools did not allow clubs in their "Rec Sports" departments to resume activities the way Athletic Departments could, with their far larger budgets for testing and even socially distanced travel.
Wolleben - "There are so many programs coming to ACRA's this year who were not allowed to do anything last academic year, and to see some of those programs thriving with roster numbers, speed and depth gives me a lot of hope for ACRA's in the future."
Hartsuff - "Every one of the ACRA teams is facing the same situation: getting our footing back. Some teams were able to weather the restrictions from their universities better than others. It was evident to me back in the fall with the results from the Head of the Charles Collegiate events, that the club teams relative to the varsity teams had lost a step with having lost two seasons to the pandemic compared to the one that varsity teams lost. So this year has been more about rebuilding institutional memory for all of us. Entries have been down across the country at regional regattas because teams are smaller. I think it will take a few years to rebound from our smaller sophomore classes. In my experience, once a class shrinks it stays small."
During these past two years, ACRA's Board has been taking the lead on helping team's weather theses pauses and lengthy shutdowns:
Brown - "Last season, we all understood the urgency of doing what we could to help clubs get through the pandemic, knowing that, a lot of times, club sport managers and admin people would take the path of least resistance, which in a year like last year, is just a blanket "No" to everything. [ACRA] tried to do what we could to work with USRowing to get language on the guidelines that would be followed and tried to coordinate and get messages out to the membership to help them communicate with their Club Sport directors: some legit guidelines from a legit organization [that clubs and athletes could use]."
"We've tried to get communication out to help these programs that just don't have the experience or they don't have the coaching consistency of some of the bigger club teams. And that's for the sake of the whole membership, because we need everyone to keep the membership strong.
"One of our biggest concerns was just those programs that don't have the infrastructure or the history or the stability over the last couple of years with a pandemic--who's coaching the team now, who's on the roster, when was the last time they were able to get a real recruiting class of freshmen--and to help these smaller programs navigate the pandemic and come through on the other side--expecting it'll take us a year or two to get back to where we were, but trying to minimize that impact as much as possible."
Even Michigan, one of those bigger programs, with over 27 years of coaching consistency in Hartsuff, faced these challenges of simply keeping things going, and growing, the past two years:
Hartsuff - "The biggest challenge was keeping the team alive. We weren't able to recruit in the fall of 2020, so our sophomore class is very small. The spring of 2021 was by far the most frustrating experience I have had in my coaching career, with COVID restrictions having been loosened for the varsity sports, and seeing our women's team fly all over the country and competing while we were prevented from doing so, was hard to watch. It's only so interesting doing team zoom erg workouts, and while the training was getting done, racing experience was lost, and as a result leadership was not able to impart lessons learned to younger rowers."
So, too, with Bucknell:
Wolleben - "There have been so many challenges that we just don't want to think about anymore. That is why this regatta is so exciting. Hopefully we can turn the page on the last two years, take what we learned from those challenges as institutions and as a national organization and move forward."
New and Improved Regatta
The 2022 ACRA Championship will seed some changes --like the organization itself, with its new 501c3 status--since 2019, the last time it was held, at Lake Lanier in Georgia (there was an unofficial, come-as-you-are edition last year in Oak Ridge, which also had a virtual erg component, with teams racing under names like 'Ergslayer' and 'Prestige Worldwide' to underline the spirit of the event; results here and photos here). The regatta has a new location, a new and earlier spot on the calendar, some new events and COVID related eligibility rules, and an even a full-time regatta Director in long-time SIRA chief Bob Jaugstetter.
Brown - on the new venue: Oak Ridge -
"We wanted to open the championship site up to bid. We'd been at Lake Lanier for so long, and it had been great to us: there's a lot of great benefits there and we very well may go back there in the future, because there are so many benefits to it. But we wanted to open it up in bed and see how other other venues would fit in with our our budget. The other thing was just the location: a lot of these club programs don't have a lot of resources for travel, and getting to Lake Lanier in Georgia is a big trip for a lot of teams, so we wanted to look at some of those logistics."
Brown - on adjusting the dates -
"We've moved the regatta a week earlier, so it is no longer on Memorial Day Weekend. Part of that is to help with the travel costs: we thought that this would help teams with the travel costs, using aa different venue and a different weekend. It's still quite expensive for teams to travel this year."
"We'll get feedback from the membership after the regatta, at our annual meeting, and then the decision as far as the best way to move forward. But we wanted to see what the options were, and not just, to be perfectly blunt, do things the way we've always done them for the sake of it, but to double check and see: is there a better way to do things to the betterment of the membership?"
Brown - on adding an Adaptive event -
"This year, we will also be including an Adaptive event. I believe ACRA will be the first rowing collegiate national championship to include an adaptive event and we are excited to provide these racing opportunities for all of our athletes to compete at the National level."
[ed. note: the Dad Vail Regatta does offer Adaptive racing, but is not considered a national championship.]
"We put out a survey and we asked coaches the question: would you would you have an athlete that would be interested in competing in an Adaptive event? And we got several responses, from across the country, that there were athletes interested. Now, it's one thing to say that and it's another thing to actually have them attend and compete, but we thought: 'If we don't have it on the schedule, then there's zero chance of it happening.' Even if even if we have one athlete, or zero athletes this first year, the races are there, the opportunity is there. And people can work towards that."
"With everything going on the last few years with diversity, inclusion, and inclusivity, we wanted to continue being at the forefront of that. We intend to have one category, and if we have different classifications of Adaptive athletes, they'll race together until we see more growth. But again, it's all about just putting it on the schedule, and giving them the opportunity to attend."
Brown - on changing definition of Novice due to Pandemic -
"We made a pretty aggressive novice eligibility change due to COVID, and that is all about just trying to maximize retention, knowing that teams hadn't been able to recruit for the last couple of years, and knowing that athletes didn't have a chance to compete last couple of years. We've actually said that the novice classification would extend all the way back to the fall of 2019, so basically, the last two years were forgiven, essentially."
"Those athletes that were freshmen the year of the pandemic may have had a chance to race in the fall, and maybe even one maybe a race in the spring in early March of 2020. Now there's an argument that all that rowing might justify the experience of a novice so they could move up, but given the lack of recruiting and the concern that we have for the survival of clubs, let's be generous rather than strict--and give athletes the chance to have an opportunity."
Hartsuff - on the impact of the rule change -
"The interesting phenomenon with this year's entries are that novice entries exceed varsity entries, so there are good freshman/novice numbers compared to varsity numbers. So it appears coaches are both taking advantage of the Covid exceptions we extended this year, in combination with smaller varsity squads from the pandemic, and larger freshman/novice turnouts, perhaps because kids were wanting to get involved in something."
Brown - on extending eligibility due to Pandemic -
"We also extended the five year rule and the four years of eligibility--again, to forgive the last two years. If you're a graduate student and you were able to stay enrolled as a full time student and meet those other eligibility criteria, you have a fifth and sixth year of competition--purely to assist teams to keep their roster size and to help the teams make it through these last couple of years. From what I can gather, there's quite a few teams that have been able to really benefit from that in a good way, which was the intent."
"There's quite a quite a few fifth and sixth year rowers, around the country, making for some pretty fast boats. And then also, at the novice level, I know there's a lot of "second year novices" and maybe even some third-years able to compete in the novice event still. That was the intent: to make things a little more competitive or a little "faster" this year, but its all for the long term benefit of the membership and the organization, a way to help survive the last couple of years."
Next Steps for ACRA
Under Brown's leadership and the guidance of Hartsuff, Wolleben, and the other coaches on the Board, ACRA is actively seeking ways to help its member clubs grow the sport effectively and safely.
That prompted ACRA to help take the lead after the tragic drowning of two club rowers at at Iowa State in March of 2021.
Brown - "As a board, we want to do what we can to eliminate anything like the tragedy at Iowa State, as much as possible within it within our scope and our purview. We did some work with USRowing and held a safety webinar, to which we invited all programs and coaches in the fall. We had a panel of four or five different ACRA coaches sharing their experiences and some suggestions, ultimately on how to follow the USRowing guidelines for safety and weather, but but also trying to help the programs and the school administrators know that there is some guidance available here from ACRA. That there are some guidelines that need to be followed, and best safety practices, and if that's followed, then it greatly reduces the chance of accidents and tragedies."
"Francis Stripp, who coaches at Vermont and has emergency training himself, has this fantastic emergency training plan manual, which we added to ACRA website just to provide as a resource to programs."
"There is such a big turnover in the coaching staff at some ACRA schools: young coaches that are so passionate about the sport, but they just haven't had the experience or even know where to look. So we are getting some more information out there to help these programs and do what we can to make it a safer but also a more positive and productive experience for all club programs."
For Brown as President, ACRA is about creating opportunities for collegiate club athletes, both as they come into the sport and to develop their talents to the highest levels of the rowing.
Brown - "For me, it's about defining the role of ACRA and putting the organization in a place where it provides opportunities for collegiate athletes to compete, but also it's not just a recreational, participation organization: ACRA is a competitive championship level. We are not an invitational, so anyone who wants to come can come. That means that there's some athletes at ACRA who are not really very competitive at all, but that they're still welcome to come and compete. But at the other end, there's some really fast, talented oarsmen and oarswomen in the ACRA. We've all heard the stories of the club athletes that go on to make a national team with the Olympics, right? That's not a surprise to anyone, but I do think that pool of athletes is getting bigger."
"The talent at the top end of the ACRA, is getting more and more competitive. You look at the results this year. There are probably 13 or 14 programs that have a chance to make the Grand Final this year in the Varsity Eight."
"There's a lot of a lot of fast athletes and I think the thing that's most impressive to me is that they do it while paying for the privilege, driving themselves to regattas and paying for the coaches. Some schools have more support than others, but at the end of the day, they're not varsity athletes, they're not having the support of the athletic department. I'm always impressed that the commitment these athletes have year after year, to put in the same amount of training that a lot of the athletes that IRA and NCAA programs are doing, but a lot less of the support and the infrastructure around them."
"The level of commitment and competition in the ACRA is really impressive, and I think it helps: it helps USRowing and the national team and it's good for the individual athletes, as well."
You can lean more about ACRA, and see the training and safety materials they freely share with club programs, at their website: americancollegiaterowing.org.
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