Do you know rowing? Most people do not. Most people do not even know that our school has a crew team! Maybe it is because it is a club rather than a school-funded sport. Maybe it is because it is not a very large group. Here is everything you need to know about rowing before their fall season is over.

There are two types of rowing; sweeping, in which you have two hands on one oar, and sculling in which you have two oars, and one hand on each. 

There are also three types of boats that the HB Crew Team uses. There are singles which are smaller boats that hold only one person, there are pairs and doubles that are both meant for two people. Pairs are used for sculling and doubles are used for sweeping. There are quads and fours that are meant to contain four people. Quads are used for sculling and fours are used for sweeping. The HB Crew Team mainly uses quads. Finally, there are eights that contain eight people and are used for sculling.

There are multiple different levels of rowing. Unlike most sports, you cannot try out to be a varsity rower. Instead, you must begin as a novice rower. A rower can only become a varsity rower after rowing as a novice for two years. 

Many people start rowing in middle school as junior rowers, continue rowing in high school and when they become juniors in high school, they become varsity rowers. This is similar to what happened to varsity rower Madi Leclerc. Leclerc began rowing as an eighth grader after a notable vacation to Hawaii.

“We [Leclerc and her father] were doing a kayaking tour and me and my dad decided to race to see who would get the fastest,” Leclerc says about how she got into rowing. “Even though my dad is a lot stronger than me, we were pretty much neck and neck the whole time. So that’s when he realized ‘you’re really good at rowing, the middle school has a crew team, you should join it’. So then I showed up for tryouts and made the team.”

Charlie Snoke, one of the Crew Team Captains, believes that crew is a very important team to have at this school because they all learn to work well with other people.                                                                                                                                      

“Rowing is a very teamwork based activity,” says Charlie Snoke. “You’re in a boat with maybe three, or seven, or one other person. . . [and] it’s really just learning to work well with others because you’re trying to copy their exact movements.” Crew team is a very teamwork based activity in fact, teamwork is fundamental to the crew team because without it, they would be rowing side to side instead of straight forward.

Leclerc agrees that the Crew Team is an immensely teamwork based sport, stating that it is “a very close community”. She believes that this is mostly because not many people know about the crew team and it’s a pretty small group. 

Leclerc finished off our interview with some wise words about why she thinks the crew team is so amazing.

“[The Crew Team is] a close community where everybody knows each other and we all just have a good time,” Leclerc said. “[We are] still doing what we like.”