Crew

Fordham Prep's Crew Team is comprised of Varsity, Junior Varsity, Lightweight and Freshman levels, and competes against the best scholastic and junior teams in the country in both fall and spring seasons. While few students have prior experience in the sport, the team structure allows and encourages competitive athletes to learn how to row from scratch and compete successfully with a view towards the sport becoming a life-long passion, and an eye towards competing at the top colleges and universities and beyond.

Freshmen and novice rowers and coxswains are introduced to the sport and taught the basic technical skills during the tryout period, which typically lasts up to two weeks. Within a couple of weeks of making the team, the new rowers begin to compete against other freshman and novice crews at the same regattas attended by the Varsity and JV squads. By the end of the school year, those "novice" athletes hopefully advance to a New York State Championship and earn bids to compete at the Scholastic National Championships against the top teams from across the country.

The fall season consists of longer races throughout the Northeast commonly known as "Head Races." These races generally include up to 80 competitors, and are run against the clock on distances of up to 3.5 miles on rivers with the teams crossing the starting line in single file and using a combination of speed and tactics to efficiently pass as many crews as possible while getting to the finish line as quickly as possible. These fall races include the Head of the Charles in Boston, and will allow our crews to compete against scholastic teams from around the world, including Europe and South America.

The spring season is the sport's main competitive season. It consists of much shorter sprint races of 1,500 or 2,000 meters, the standard Olympic racing distance. The spring racing schedule includes regattas against the top teams on the east coast and the country, and culminates with the New York State Championships, the Scholastic National Championships and the US Rowing Youth National Championships in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The team practices daily after school out of the New Rochelle Rowing Club in Westchester County; during the winter, training moves indoors to  Fordham University's Lombardi Center.
 

Head Coach: Larry Muri
Junior Varsity/Lightweight Coach: Dave Walton
Freshman Coach: Pat Fowley '11
Assistant Junior Varsity/Novice Coach: Greg Schiliro