The Rowing Year

One year. Four seasons.
Each with its own job.

Fall is here now — it owns the front page. This is the rest of the cycle: what each season is for, what it feels like, and why the year works as a whole. As each season arrives, it takes its turn up front.

December 1 – February 28

Winter — where speed is built

We'll be honest, because we always are: winter is indoors, and it's hard work. We make it as fun as we can — and we're good at that — but it's nowhere near the freedom of being out on the water. What it is, is the season that decides the spring. Every meter on the erg, every session in the weight room, every 2K test is speed banked for championship season. The girls who show up in December are the girls who fly in May.

Winter has its bright spots, and they're real ones: the Team Holiday Party on 12/16, U19 and U17 together; the winter training trip, 2/11 – 2/17, a week of warm-weather water time for U19 and U17 that athletes talk about all year; and the Ergathon on 2/28 — our annual fundraiser, and the loudest the boathouse gets all winter.

Athlete focused mid-stroke on the erg
City Island Rowing athletes with medals
March 8 – May 21

Spring — championship season

Spring is what the whole year points at. Head racing gives way to sprint racing — six lanes, side by side, everything decided in under seven minutes — and the calendar builds to the NY State Championships on 5/8, where a top-four finish qualifies a crew for Youth Nationals, 6/10 – 6/13. CIR crews qualify year after year. That's the standard, and spring is where it's defended.

Honesty again: early spring is not glamorous. March water is cold and the weather is often unkind — which is exactly why athletes who stayed connected through fall and winter arrive loving the sport enough to push through the raw weeks and into the reward. The U16 spring season runs 3/16 – 5/21, and the year's formal close is the Captains' Dinner on 5/19, where the next captains are announced.

And one expectation, stated plainly: spring is not the time for vacation. Every U17 and U19 athlete — and any U16 hoping to race at Nationals — is expected to be home and training through championship season. An absence doesn't just affect your own journey; it is directly deleterious to the rowing journey of your teammates. In the sport we champion as the ultimate team sport, we expect complete attendance in spring.

June 21 – August 8

Summer — rowing's best-kept secret

Here's a secret we'll happily give away: summer is the best rowing of the entire year. Warm water, long golden evenings, glassy mornings, and a boathouse full of the athletes who've discovered it. Our advice never changes: row June and July, travel in August.

There's a story behind that advice. Summer season used to stretch across the whole summer — and with families traveling at random all the way through, we were forever left with small, ad-hoc clusters of athletes, and training efficiently was nearly impossible. So we changed it. We now ask everyone, whenever possible, to save camps and travel for August: focus on training and racing in June and July, and then August is yours — with our blessing — to rest, recover, travel, have fun, and come back rested ahead of fall season. For your own athlete's sake, reserve June and July for rowing.

The racing is real, too. The whole club travels to the Philadelphia Youth Regatta on 7/17, the U16 summer season runs through 7/30, and U19 and U17 athletes who train through July earn the trip to Canadian Henley, 8/1 – 8/8 — international racing, and one of the great experiences in junior rowing.

A four on glass-calm water at sunset
The whole team in a circle, faces in, looking down at the camera
The Last Week of August

And summer ends the way the year begins: pre-season

Pre-season sets the tone for the entire year. U19 and U17 go to two-a-days — morning water, afternoon work — and get their first honest taste of the volume and intensity it takes to be regionally and nationally competitive. U16 comes together as a full group for the first time, summer's learn-to-row girls included, and starts becoming a crew.

It's also the week the club takes its own measure. The seniors contending for captaincies step into the spotlight, and we get an exact read on who we have, squad by squad. Then on Friday morning it all ends at Orchard Beach with a team favorite: the Summer Olympics — all three squads, six teams drawn across every age group, and a morning of competition, sand, and chaos. It's how every season starts with everyone already knowing everybody's name.

And right now, it's fall

The best rowing of the school year is under way — warm water, golden evenings, and racing nearly every week.

This fall season Regatta guide