Hoosier Rowing club prepares for upcoming season

Eighteen years ago, IU students who wanted to bring the sport of rowing to campus formed the IU Rowing Club. This club sport has slowly gained recognition while facing the challenges of funding a team. The members of IU Crew work to turn rowing into a competitive program that honors the dreams of the club's founding members.\n"As soon as school starts, we start up practice, (which) starts at 5:30 in the morning," senior club president Steve Taylor said. "We row until probably eight, depending on if people have early classes, then we do individual gym time during the day."\nThis training schedule runs every day of the week. During the fall, the team competes on weekends in October and spends the rest of the winter training indoors. The spring season starts after Spring Break and goes to the end of the school year. The October races are distance races, anywhere from 5,000 to 6,000 meters -- about three miles. The spring races are sprints covering 2,000 meters.\nThe boats used in rowing hold either four or eight rowers. There is also a coxswain, whose duties include steering the boat and motivating the rowers. The team is split between novices, or first-years, and varsity. \n"Most people don't have rowing experience," novice coach Tim Humphrey said. "Their first year is considered their novice year, so that's a lot of time spent on technical training, building the skills they need. It's not as conditioning-oriented as the varsity team."\nOne of the biggest issues facing IU Crew is funding. As a club sport, they must raise money for its own equipment, travel and coaches. This past season they purchased a new boat, which cost nearly $20,000. The club raises the money through dues, donations and fundraisers such as Rent-a-Rower and Erg-a-Thon.\nRent-a-Rower involves hiring out rowers to do odd jobs in the community, such as painting, house cleaning and yard work. This past year the team focused on Rent-a-Rower and made quite a bit of money, Taylor said. \nFor Erg-a-Thon, rowers take pledges for every 500 meters rowed on an indoor rowing machine. \n"Erg-a-Thon is something we do that coincides with Spirit of Sport," junior fundraising chair Jonathan Harris said. "We have a set number of meters we need to earn; this year was 25,000 meters. The money goes to the Special Olympics and us."\nHumphrey outlined several goals for the upcoming season, including increasing the size of the team and raising its standing at club nationals.\n"We had a fairly small team this past year, but we had some really big guys who are going to contribute; I expect to see varsity move up in their performance, but also increase the size of the program," Humphrey said. "We also went to Philly for club nationals, ended up placing 16th out of 60. I'd like to see our position improve with next year's."\nTaylor echoed these goals. \n"I think we pretty much want to build on the success we've had in the last year," Taylor said. "We did place in a couple of our meets, both fall and spring, and we'd like to build more recognition in our team."\nFor more information on IU Crew, visit their Web site at http://www.indiana.edu/~iucrew/.