Welcome to Bowdoin Rowing!
If you are looking for information about rowing at Bowdoin, please click here to contact one of our coaches. We want to hear from you!
Bowdoin is a club sweep rowing program that primarily competes in fours. The team welcomes high school rowers from clubs all over the country with backgrounds in both sweep and sculling. In addition to experienced athletes, the club has a robust learn-to-row program and many of the team’s varsity rowers begin as novices in their first year of school.
Bowdoin’s men’s and women’s crews have distinguished themselves and the College in regional, national, and international competition. Crews have won medals (many of them gold) at the New England Rowing Championships, the Dad Vail, and the Head of The Charles regattas. The club has competed in both the Henley Royal Regatta and Henley Women’s Regatta.
Crews train on the gorgeous New Meadows river out of the Bowdoin-owned Smith Boathouse and compete in both the fall head race season and the spring sprint season.
Core Values
Safety
Because rowing is a water sport, safe operation of all equipment and safe behavior from all participants is our first and most important priority.
Generosity
As a rower you learn to give of yourself: to your boat, to the program, on and off the water. Rowing is a racing sport, and in training as well as races, you learn to give yourself to the point of emptiness, to achieve a fullness only racers know.
Reliability
Members of your boat, and the whole program rely on your presence and generosity. Five people make the boat go; relying on your crew to give as much as your give is the foundation of the sport.
Humor
Our motto is “have fun and go fast.” Fun means we enjoy one another in good humor. The balance to the strenuous work is fun, laughing with one another and enjoying the company of safe, generous and reliable boat folk.
Speed
It’s more fun to go fast. We race to win. We win when we make the boat go as fast as we can, as well as when we go faster than any other crew in the race. All our actions in and out of the boat focus on making the boat go fast.