The Independent Rowing News

Photo: Cal and Washington Battle for the 2009 IRA Title, by SportGraphics.com

THE IRA IS STUCK IN NEUTRAL
When the IRA stewards restructured the event in the fall of 2008, they wanted to create a championship that felt more like a regatta for the nation’s elite crews than a festival for anyone who wanted to show up. That desire—and the desire to protect the varsity status of current IRA programs—was partially responsible for the elimination of club crews at the IRA, a decision that has stirred up quite a bit of controversy over the past year. This fall, the stewards showed they weren’t done stirring the pot.

The Sacramento IRA was quite a change from Camden. Weather conditions and fairness issues aside, the stunning venue, slick presentation, and competitive presence of West Coast crews like Gonzaga and San Diego made the regatta feel much more like a championship-level event. But off the water, the stewards clearly weren’t happy with the fact that only 22 crews showed up for a 24-crew varsity eight event. A 6,000-mile round trip for many of the crews coupled with the challenging economic conditions played a role in the undersubscribed field. And so did a qualifying system that fell apart when one qualifying regatta was cancelled due to severe conditions and another produced crews that weren’t eligible for the IRA. Those two events created a situation in which all of the 18 Eastern Sprints schools qualified for the IRA, and when Yale and Georgetown decided not to attend, the regatta was left undersubscribed.

Reasonable people could argue that all of the mitigating circumstances above are unique events, rarely repeated on an individual basis and certainly unlikely to happen again in concert. But none of those reasonable people sit on the board of IRA stewards. The board ignored the recommendation of the IRA coaches committee (let the regatta return to Camden in its 24-boat format to see how things shake out before making more significant changes) and voted to further reduce the field to 18 varsity crews and implement an automatic qualification system to decide 17 of those 18 slots. Nine crews will qualify from the Eastern Sprints, three from the Pac-10, two from the WIRA, and one each from the Dad Vail, ECAC, and SIRA, with just one at-large bid. The stewards like the fact that the regatta will look more like the NCAA regatta—despite the fact that automatic qualification spots make up only half of that regatta—and hinted that a further reduction to 16 crews may be in the cards.

Perhaps the IRA stewards are positioning men’s rowing for an NCAA overhaul, or perhaps they’re just trying to make their bottom lines a little more palatable by ignoring the IRA coaches and further denying opportunities for rowers. But if their intentions are motivated by the former desire, they’re overlooking at least one roadblock on the way to men’s rowing gaining NCAA status: the issue of freshman eligibility. The men’s coaches are divided on this issue. Some see freshman rowing as a cherished development tool and a tradition that makes rowing unique. Others see it as an anachronism, a tradition that reflects realities that no longer exist, and a brake on the development of the athletes most likely to make an impact on their varsity programs. Either way, the IRA coaches are struggling to achieve resolution on this one. If they don’t make up their minds soon, another decision may be taken out of their hands.

The stewards appear content to let lightweight rowing continue to operate without constant meddling, but the future of lightweight programs at the IRA—especially on the men’s side—could be in trouble if they decide to apply reductions and automatic qualification systems to the lightweight field. An 18-team men’s regatta extends invitations to roughly 40 percent of the varsity men’s rowing programs from the six athletic conferences that support men’s rowing in a meaningful way. If the stewards decide to invite 40 percent of lightweight schools to the regatta, they’ll be left with roughly five crews in the lightweight men’s and women’s events. And if they look further, they’ll see that all of the lightweight men’s schools qualify from the same conference—the Eastern Sprints—which may provoke them to ask a troubling question. Stay tuned.

By Chip Davis