The West Side Rowing Club is a rowing club in Buffalo, New York. The club's athletes train, practice, and race along the Black Rock Canal and the Buffalo River. West Side is one of two rowing clubs in the city of Buffalo, the other being the Buffalo Scholastic Rowing Association to the south of downtown. [1]
The club was founded in 1912 at the southern tip of Squaw Island, now known as Unity Island. Although originally a men's club, West Side began sponsoring youth rowing programs as early as 1921. [2] In 1975, the club burned down but was rebuilt in its present location near Porter Avenue shortly thereafter. [3] Women's rowing began at West Side in 1978 and, as of 2023, outnumbers the men's programs. [4] In 2007, the club expanded its facilities with the addition of a second boathouse. Using plans created for the University of Wisconsin by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, the Fontana Boathouse was built to house additional equipment and teams. [5]
The club has produced rowers and coaches who have won multiple medals in the Summer Olympic Games. Tom Terhaar, coach of the United States National Women's Rowing Team, has won gold at every Summer Olympics game since 2008. [6] Emily Regan, also a Buffalo native and a graduate of Nichols School, won gold at the 2016 Summer Olympics under Terhaar. [7]
The club offers programs to athletes in the junior, senior, master's, and pararowing boat classes, while also attracting athletes from area schools not offering rowing teams. Six high schools are partnered with West Side, including the Nichols School, Mount Saint Mary Academy, Nardin Academy, Gow School, St. Joseph's Collegiate Institute, and the public City Honors School. In addition to high schools, several colleges and universities are affiliated with the club, including Buffalo State College, Canisius College, and D'Youville College, all based within the city. [8] The University at Buffalo, the larger SUNY university in the area, trains and races on Tonawanda Creek in the town of Amherst, but has been based at West Side in the past. [9]
Each year, the West Side Rowing Club hosts between three and five regattas on the Black Rock Canal. [10] The regattas draw thousands of athletes and hundreds of boats from the Western New York region, across the country, and internationally with Canada. [11]
There are two facilities on the grounds of the West Side Rowing Club. The Doc Schabb Boathouse features an indoor rowing tank, ergometers and five bays of boat storage. [12] The Fontana Boathouse was built in 2007 and is the newest facility at the West Side complex, home to the Canisius Golden Griffins women's crew since 2011. [13] The design of the boathouse was adapted from plans by architect Frank Lloyd Wright for the Wisconsin Badgers Crew. When the University of Wisconsin–Madison suspended its football program in 1906 over safety concerns, plans for the boathouse were abandoned. [14] Wright's plans were later reintroduced at West Side and the boathouse was constructed, opening in 2007. [15]
Rowing, sometimes called crew in the United States, is the sport of racing boats using oars. It differs from paddling sports in that rowing oars are attached to the boat using oarlocks, while paddles are not connected to the boat. Rowing is divided into two disciplines: sculling and sweep rowing. In sculling, each rower holds two oars—one in each hand, while in sweep rowing each rower holds one oar with both hands. There are several boat classes in which athletes may compete, ranging from single sculls, occupied by one person, to shells with eight rowers and a coxswain, called eights. There are a wide variety of course types and formats of racing, but most elite and championship level racing is conducted on calm water courses 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) long with several lanes marked using buoys.
The Harvard Crimson are 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.
The Head of the Charles Regatta, also known as HOCR, is a rowing head race held on the penultimate complete weekend of October each year on the Charles River, which separates Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts United States. It is the largest 3-day regatta in the world, with 11,000 athletes rowing in over 1,900 boats in 61 events. According to the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau, the three-day event brings 225,000 people to the Greater Boston area and $72 million to the local economy.
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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.
University of London Boat Club is the rowing club for the University of London and its member institutions, many of which also have their own boat clubs. The club has its boathouse on the Thames in Chiswick, London, UK. It is a designated High-Performance Programme funded by British Rowing.
Douglas Steven Coppola Jr. and is an American rower. He won a bronze medal in the men's eight at the 2008 Summer Olympics. He is currently the Head Women's coach at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.
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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).
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Fairmount Rowing Association is an amateur rowing club, founded in 1877. The facility, located at #2 Boathouse Row in the historic Boathouse Row of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is on the National Register of Historic Places. Fairmount originally catered to blue-collar youths living in the Fairmount neighborhood. In 1916, after decades of being rejected, the club was finally allowed to join the Schuylkill Navy. The Club boasts being known as the "premiere club for Masters rowing in the mid-Atlantic region" and has produced several world class rowers.
The College Boat Club of the University of Pennsylvania is the rowing program for University of Pennsylvania Rowing, which is located in the Burk-Bergman Boathouse at #11 Boathouse Row on the historic Boathouse Row of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its membership consists entirely of past and present rowers of the University of Pennsylvania.
Gillin Boat Club is the rowing program for St. Joseph's University Rowing and St. Joseph's Prep Rowing. It is situated at the 1,000-meter mark of the Schuylkill River race course in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Gillin Boat Club was admitted to the Schuylkill Navy in 2004, by a unanimous vote of the Navy's members.
The Brown University men's rowing team represents Brown University in men's intercollegiate rowing and is the oldest organized intercollegiate sport at the university. Since its revival in 1949, the Brown University rowing program has become one of the most successful collegiate rowing programs in the world, winning men's and women's national titles, as well as championship titles at the world-famous Henley Royal Regatta in London. In addition, the program has produced 32 Olympic rowers.
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