Where'd you get that Boat?

One of the most challenging parts of starting a rowing team is the acquisition of equipment. Rowing is an asset-heavy sport…and at NHS the team is considered a Club, which means we receive no funding from the school district and rely on payment of dues and fundraising to support the team.

Let me set the scene:  in the fall of 2010, 11 NHS students spend one season rowing with Saline Crew and decide they want to start a team at Northville. The next season was spring of 2011, and Saline leased us enough equipment to get us through – at this point we had 35 rowers. For the Fall season in 2011, the new “Northville Rowing Club” needed to acquire the equipment necessary to become self-sustaining. Here’s what we bought:

Boats – as you learned in a past blog, teams use boats that seat 1, 2, 4 or 8 rowers.  A single can cost a couple thousand dollars, a double another couple thousand; a four would be about $20,000 and a brand new eight? Try  $40,000! 

Now, we were in no position to look for brand new boats – so we placed a few ads for used boats – also contacted area University teams (support from the institution and alumni allow college teams to get new boats at frequent intervals – thereby allowing them to sell their older fleet at much reduced prices.) We travelled to St. Catharine’s in Ontario, Ohio University boathouse in West Virginia, the Wyandotte Boat Club for used equipment from the Mt. Carmel team which, after over 50 years was disbanding due to lack of funds – and as near as Ann Arbor to purchase our best boat – an Eight – from the University of Michigan men’s team. We ended up with a fleet of 4 eights, a couple of fours and a borrowed double. 

Oars – it’s a good thing that the majority of our rowers only use one oar, because each one costs over $300. We were able to find quite a few used oars – but also had to purchase half the oars new. 

Boat Trailer – we lucked into an inexpensive trailer from the Mt. Carmel team – a trailer that might normally cost more than $6,000 cost us only $1000.

Launches – the coaches must be in the water near the boats at all times. While the shells (boats) are powered by rowers, the coach launches are small boats powered by gas engines. Each of these boat/engine/trailer combos cost about $4,500. Because we had such a great turnout our first season, we ended up needing 3 coach launches our very first season.  Luckily three generous families stepped in and funded this purchase. The team has since paid those families back and bought ANOTHER launch due to growth in participation.

Rowing machines – called ergometers, these are what our rowers use to train on when the weather won’t allow them on the water. As you can imagine – living in Michigan leaves the time during the school year allowing water practices pretty short. Each ergometer costs $900 and the team has purchased about 15 so far. The goal would be to have enough machines for the entire team to train together – so we’re a little under halfway there.

While coach salaries and insurance costs are covered by the payment of dues by each rowing family, any new equipment costs require fundraising – and we’ve got our biggest fundraising event coming up this weekend. The NRC ROWATHON is a marathon session of our rowers on rowing machines – erging the miles from Detroit to Mackinac. If you are in downtown Northville near the Stampeddlar courtyard, stop by and cheer on our athletes – and maybe even give them a little monetary support toward the purchase of a new-to-NRC boat! Remember you can always learn more about the team AND our fundraiser at www.northvillerowing.com.

Up next week:  What the heck is a regatta?