American Collegiate Rowing Association (ACRA) is one of the governing bodies of college rowing in the United States, together with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA).
Established in 2008 by Gregg Hartsuff under the General Not for Profit Association Act of 1986, the American Collegiate Rowing Association (ACRA) is made up of club-level collegiate rowing teams.
Before 2006, competitive club rowing programs, which receive little or no funding from their university athletic departments, were able to compete at the IRA Championship. During the 2006-2007 season, Rutgers University cut funding from its men's rowing program, reducing it to "club" status. Part of Rutgers's justification for cutting rowing was that clubs could compete equally with funded programs at the IRA Championships. To avoid other varsity program members from losing funding, the IRA excluded clubs from competing at its championship beginning in 2007. ACRA became an alternative championship for these clubs. [1] It has since grown to include over 76 competing collegiate programs in 2024. [2]
The ACRA National Championship Regatta is considered the National Championship for collegiate club programs and all programs outside the NCAA/IRA structure.
The regatta is split into six regions: the Mid-Atlantic region, the Great Lakes region, the Plains region, the Northeast region, the South region, and the West Coast region. [3] The ACRA is a broadcast partner of The Rowers Consortium of Huntington Harbour, California, who has broadcast the regatta on The Rowing Channel since 2014.
ACRA is currently organized by a coach-elected board consisting of elected officers and representatives from each of the six regions. As of 2024, the board consists of the following members:
| President | Dan Wolleben Bucknell University |
| Secretary | Gregg Hartsuff Michigan University |
| Treasurer | Scott Armstrong Minnesota University |
| Great Lakes Rep. | Peter Rosberg University of Cincinnati |
| Mid-Atlantic Rep. | Frank Biller University of Virginia |
| Northeast Rep. | Doug Welling Bowdoin University |
| Plains Rep. | Rachel Tuck Wichita State University |
| South Rep. | Jon Miller Vanderbilt University |
| West Coast Rep. | Peter Brevick Washington State University |
| Year | Champion |
|---|---|
| 2008 |  Michigan |
| 2009 | Michigan |
| 2010 | Michigan |
| 2011 |  Virginia |
| 2012 | Virginia |
| 2013 | Michigan |
| 2014 | Michigan |
| 2015 | Michigan |
| 2016 | Michigan |
| 2017 |  UC Santa Barbara |
| 2018 | Michigan |
| 2019 | Delaware |
| 2020 | Not held due to COVID-19 Pandemic |
| 2021 | Not held due to COVID-19 Pandemic |
| 2022 | George Washington |
| 2023 | UCLA |
| 2024 | Notre Dame |
The ACRA Championship for the 2024-25 season will be hosted in Oak Ridge, Tennessee from Friday, May 16 until Sunday, May 18. [8]
The Harvard Crimson is the nickname of the intercollegiate athletic teams of Harvard College. The school's teams compete in NCAA Division I. As of 2013, there were 42 Division I intercollegiate varsity sports teams for women and men at Harvard, more than at any other NCAA Division I college in the country. Like the other Ivy League colleges, Harvard does not offer athletic scholarships. Athletics at Harvard began in 1780 when the sophomores challenged the freshmen to a wrestling tournament with the losers buying dinner. Since its historic boat race against archrival Yale in 1852, Harvard has been in the forefront of American intercollegiate sports. Its football team conceived the modern version of the game and devised essentials ranging from the first concrete stadium to a scoreboard to uniform numbers to signals.
The Wisconsin Badgers Crew is the rowing team that represents the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Rowing at the University dates back to 1874. The women's openweight team is an NCAA Division I team. The men's and lightweight women's programs compete at the Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) Championship Regatta because the NCAA does not sanction a men's or lightweight women's national championship. Chris Clark has been the men's head coach since 1996 and Bebe Bryans was the women's head coach from 2004-2023.
Rowing is the oldest intercollegiate sport in the United States. The first intercollegiate race was a contest between Yale and Harvard in 1852. In the 2018–19 school year, there were 2,340 male and 7,294 female collegiate rowers in Divisions I, II and III, according to the NCAA. The sport has grown since the first NCAA statistics were compiled for the 1981–82 school year, which reflected 2,053 male and 1,187 female collegiate rowers in the three divisions. Some concern has been raised that some recent female numbers are inflated by non-competing novices.
The Dartmouth College Big Green are the varsity and club athletic teams representing Dartmouth College, an American university located in Hanover, New Hampshire. Dartmouth's teams compete at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level as a member of the Ivy League conference, as well as in the ECAC Hockey conference. The college offers 34 varsity teams, 17 club sports, and 24 intramural teams. Sports teams are heavily ingrained in the culture of the college and serve as a social outlet, with 75% of the student body participating in some form of athletics.
Stephen C. Gladstone is an American rowing coach and former college athletics administrator. He is the Head Coach for the Men's Heavyweight Crew Team at the United States Naval Academy. He was an assistant coach for the men's heavyweight crew team at Yale University until 2024 and was the team's head coach from 2010 to 2023. Previously, Gladstone coached at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also served as athletic director.
The now defunct, short-lived National Collegiate Rowing Championship, often simply called the "Cincinnati Regatta," was a quasi- championship for men's and women's collegiate rowing, held in Cincinnati, Ohio, between 1982 and 1996. It pitted the winners of the Eastern Sprints, the Pac-10s, the Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) National Championship and other crews invited at-large. The invited crews usually included Eastern Sprints and Pac-10 medalists, and Harvard and Yale. The IRA National Championship has been considered the national collegiate rowing championship since it was first held in 1895.
Catholic University Cardinals rowing teams represent the Catholic University Cardinals in men's and women's intercollegiate rowing.
The Columbia University Lions are the collective athletic teams and their members from Columbia University, an Ivy League institution in New York City, United States. The current director of athletics is Peter Pilling.
The Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) governs intercollegiate rowing between varsity men's heavyweight, men's lightweight, and women's lightweight rowing programs across the United States, while the NCAA fulfills this role for women's open weight rowing. It is the direct successor to the Rowing Association of American Colleges, the first collegiate athletic organization in the United States, which operated from 1870–1894.
The Navy Midshipmen are the athletic teams that represent the United States Naval Academy. The academy sponsors 36 varsity sports teams and 12 club sport teams. Both men's and women's teams are called Navy Midshipmen or "Mids". They participate in the NCAA's Division I, as a non-football member of the Patriot League, a football-only member of the American Athletic Conference in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), and a member of the Collegiate Sprint Football League (men), Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges (men), Eastern Association of Women's Rowing Colleges, Eastern Intercollegiate Gymnastics League (men), Mid-Atlantic Squash Conference (men) and Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association. Navy is also one of approximately 300 members of the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC).
The Northeastern Huskies are the athletic teams representing Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. They compete in thirteen varsity team sports: men's and women's hockey ; men's baseball, men's and women's basketball, women's field hockey and volleyball, swimming, and men's and women's soccer, and men's and women's rowing, track and cross-country.
The Grand Valley State Lakers are the intercollegiate athletic teams of Grand Valley State University, located in Allendale, Michigan, United States. The GVSU Lakers compete at the NCAA Division II level and are members of the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC).
The Princeton Tigers are the athletic teams of Princeton University. The school sponsors 35 varsity teams in 20 sports. The school has won several NCAA national championships, including one in men's fencing, three in women's lacrosse, six in men's lacrosse, and eight in men's golf. Princeton's men's and women's crews have also won numerous national rowing championships. The field hockey team made history in 2012 as the first Ivy League team to win the NCAA Division I Championship in field hockey.
The UC San Diego Tritons are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the University of California, San Diego. The Tritons compete in NCAA Division I as a member of the Big West Conference (BWC).
The Red Foxes are the athletic teams of Marist College. The Marist Red Foxes compete in NCAA Division I athletics as a member of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) the only exception being football, a member of the Pioneer Football League (PFL).
Long Beach State athletics, or simply Beach athletics, are the athletic teams that represent California State University, Long Beach. Teams compete in 19 sports at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level. Long Beach State is a founding member of the Big West Conference, and also competes in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation and the Golden Coast Conference for sports not sponsored by the Big West.
The first tier of intercollegiate sports in the United States includes sports that are sanctioned by one of the collegiate sport governing bodies. The major sanctioning organization is the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Before mid-1981, women's top-tier intercollegiate sports were solely governed by the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW). Smaller colleges are governed by the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). Two-year colleges are governed by the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) in most of the country, except for the unaffiliated California Community College Athletic Association (CCCAA) and Northwest Athletic Conference (NWAC).
Illini Rowing is a club college rowing program that represents the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Both the men's and women's teams that make up the program are members of the American Collegiate Rowing Association (ACRA) in the Great Lakes Region. The program operates as a registered student organization (RSO) at the University of Illinois. The university does not currently have an NCAA varsity team and the club program is the highest level of competitive rowing offered by the university. As of 2014, the program has attained two ACRA national titles for their wins in the Women's Novice Four event in both 2012 and 2014 at the ACRA National Championships. The Illini Rowing Men's crew has captured the team's only state champion titles, winning in both 2013 and 2014. The Women's team has fallen short each year, losing to the University of Chicago both years.
Women's rowing is the participation of women in the sport of rowing. Women row in all boat classes, from single scull to eights, across the same age ranges and standards as men, from junior amateur through university-level to elite athlete. Typically men and women compete in separate crews although mixed crews and mixed team events also take place. Coaching for women is similar to that for men.
In the United States, Crew or Rowing is a popular sport in secondary and tertiary education. USRowing is the sport's national governing body. The Harvard-Yale Regatta is the oldest college sporting event in the United States.
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