The Next Generation Takes the Water: The Dad Vail Regatta

May is one of my favorite months in rowing. Across the country, youth and collegiate rowers are competing in regional championships, chasing national qualifying times, and learning what it means to push past the point where their bodies tell them to stop. 🚣‍♀️

Next week, the Dad Vail Regatta brings together collegiate programs from across the nation on the Cooper River in New Jersey: the largest collegiate regatta in the United States. Thousands of young athletes will race for their schools, their teammates, and themselves. Some are rowing in their first major competition; others are ending careers that began on middle school docks. All of them are discovering what sport can teach: discipline, teamwork, resilience, and the quiet satisfaction of earning every meter.

When I started rowing at Connecticut College in the early 1970s, I had never picked up an oar in my life. The women's program was barely a program at all. Today, women's rowing offers more NCAA scholarships than nearly any other sport. That transformation happened because generations of athletes refused to let the sport stay small.

To every young rower out there grinding through spring racing season: you are the future. The water doesn't care where you came from or what anyone expects of you. It only asks whether you're willing to pull. Keep rowing. 💪

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