Unfortunately, as a large team, the only time we can get everyone together on a daily basis is in the morning before your classes start. While it’s not always fun to wake up early, we do find that it helps our athletes to schedule their time better. When you can wake up and get your practice out of the way first thing in the morning, you then have a full day ahead of you and you don’t need to worry about scheduling around practice.

Don’t worry! More than 90% of the athletes on our team had never touched an oar prior to stepping foot on campus. This is also the case for most schools across the country. For this reason, all first-year collegiate athletes, regardless of their year in school, are eligible to compete in a Novice division. As a novice, you will only race against other novices, the vast majority of whom are just learning the sport as well. Over the course of a full year, we will develop your skills and fitness to be able to go toe-to-toe with top programs from around the country.

The “student” in student-athlete always comes first and year-after-year our teams prove this to be the case. Not only are our teams filled with engineering and science majors, but we have averaged at least a 3.5 team G.P.A. each of the last 5 years. Most of our coaches are working on or hold graduate degrees and understand and promote the value in a well-balanced student-athlete experience. We also have a number of resources available to you to help with your academic success throughout the year.

Our clubs operate on a varsity-like schedule. This means that we practice up to 6-days per week with travel for racing on a number of weekends in the Fall and Spring. With that said, we know that most students interested in our team are new to campus and probably aren’t ready to commit full-time to our training and practice schedule. We will take some time to ease you in to our practice regimen to help you to adapt to handling training on top of a difficult course load.

During the early fall, practice time will be limited to 1 hour per day with no weekend activities. Starting in the first week of October, the practices will get a little longer and there will be optional Saturday sessions. Our indoor training period runs from November to mid-March and will have 1 1/2 to 2 hour practices 5 days/week with supplemental workouts to be assigned outside of practice. By the time we go back on the water in March, we will be operating on a full schedule with planned practices of at least 2 hours 6 days/week.

As club sport teams, we receive limited funding from the University and we do have a number of costs to cover such as travel, entry fees, equipment upkeep, and coaching. We do our best in order to limit the amount that any student athletes pay out-of-pocket in order to make our sport as accessible as possible. Our dues payments for novice athletes are staggered throughout the year so that the financial commitment will grow in line with your time commitment.

We also have a number of different fundraising opportunities designed to contribute directly to your dues. In past years, a number of athletes have been able to put in the effort so that they didn’t have to pay anything out of pocket.

If finances are still an issue for you, please come talk to the coaches or team treasurers. Need-based financial aid is available through the Illinois Rowing Association.

Simply show up to any of our open tryout sessions, or fill out our recruitment info form here!