In the United States, many high schools have rowing teams or "crews". The Stotesbury Cup is the largest regatta for high school rowing, and the Scholastic Rowing Association of America also holds a championship regatta open to schools in North America.
U.S. high school crews have been successful internationally, with winners of the Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup in 14 of the 73 years it has been awarded.
Rowing was one of the earliest sports to be popular in the United States, [1] practiced as early as 1860 at Phillips Exeter Academy, along with baseball, football, and cricket, largely on the initiative of the students rather than the school administration. [2] St. Paul's School students formed two boat clubs in 1871 (Halcyon and Shattuck) which have raced each other annually ever since. [3] [4] Philadelphia students, with the help of the Schuylkill Navy, formed the Interscholastic Rowing League in 1897, and the Boston Athletic Association offered rowing for high schoolers in 1898. [5] The Philadelphia Interscholastic League added crew as a sport in 1902. [6] In New York, the Harlem Regatta Association added a scholastic eight-oared event in 1907. However, the Public Schools Athletic League soon dropped the sport due to its expense. [7] The expense of the sport caused it to fail to gain wide popularity in high schools in the nineteenth century. [8] Rowing, along with the "country club" sports of golf and tennis, was a popular sport for American prep schools in the 1920s, especially in the mid-Atlantic and New England. [9]
The American Henley Regatta added an eight-oared schoolboy event in 1904, and this was considered the national championships for secondary schools. With public schools increasingly dropping crew due to its expense, prep schools dominated the American Henley scholastic races. [10] The Stotesbury Cup was created in 1927 for Philadelphia schoools. [11] However, the scholastic event was removed from American Henley in 1932, leading the Stotesbury Cup to open itself to national competition. In 1935, the newly formed Schoolboy Rowing Association of America also offered a national championship regatta in Worcester, Massachusetts. [12]
The following are scholastic regattas. These either do not allow club crews, or give separate awards to scholastic and non-scholastic winners
Charles E. "Chick" Evans Jr. was an American amateur golfer of the 1910s and 1920s. Evans, who won the 1910 Western Open, became the first amateur to win both the U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur in one year, a feat he achieved in 1916. Evans won the U.S. Amateur again in 1920, and was runner-up three times. Selected to the Walker Cup team in 1922, 1924, and 1928, he competed in a record 50 consecutive U.S. Amateurs in his long career. Evans achieved all of this while carrying only seven hickory-shafted clubs.
Charles Stahley Butt, Jr. (1919–1992) was a high school rowing coach in Northern Virginia, United States, who was also involved in promoting the growth of school rowing in the Washington D.C. area and the country.
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The Stotesbury Cup Regatta, sponsored by the Schuylkill Navy, is the world's oldest and one of the largest high school rowing competitions. It is held annually in mid-May over a two-day period along the Schuylkill River near Boathouse Row in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Competing crews come from schools all over North America, though most hail from the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic United States.
St. Augustine Preparatory School is a private all-male Roman Catholic four-year college preparatory school located in the Richland section of Buena Vista Township, in Atlantic County, New Jersey, United States. Located on 118 acres (0.48 km2) of wooded property, it serves students in ninth through twelfth grade from across South Jersey under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Camden. The school has been accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Elementary and Secondary Schools since 1983 and the New Jersey Association of Independent Schools. St. Augustine was founded in 1959 by the Order of Saint Augustine as a minor seminary to help young men prepare for studies in the priesthood and religious life; the first class was a mixture of seminarians and day students. The school is a member of the Augustinian Secondary Education Association.
The Schuylkill Navy is an association of amateur rowing clubs of Philadelphia. Founded in 1858, it is the oldest amateur athletic governing body in the United States. The member clubs are all on the Schuylkill River where it flows through Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, mostly on the historic Boathouse Row.
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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.
The American Henley Regatta was a national championships for the sport of rowing in the United States. Unlike the prior championship regattas of the National Association of Amateur Oarsmen, the American Henley included colleges and secondary schools. The first regatta was held in 1903 in Philadelphia, and was meant to be equivalent to the Henley Royal Regatta in the United Kingdom. The regatta was alternately held in Philadelphia and Boston. It was run by the American Rowing Association. The distance was one mile, 550 yards, the same as that of the Henley Royal.
The Scholastic Rowing Association of America was formed as the Schoolboy Rowing Association of America in 1935 to hold a national championships for high school rowing. The name was changed in 1976 after women had begun competing.
The New England Interscholastic Rowing Association is an organization that holds an annual race for high school rowing on Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester, MA for school throughout New England. The first regatta was held in 1947, and only coxed fours and eights were raced. In 1962, singles were added at lunch. Girls were added in 1974.