If it wasn’t for USRowing saying we could do it, I don’t think it would have been a success.” I called USRowing and said, ‘With your support, we could make this a truly global event, and Susan Smith was all about it. “It was after we interviewed so many people and asked so many coaches what they want. “We asked, ‘How do we make this thing relatable to the general public?’ It’s basketball meets rowing meets the virtual world,” DelSordo said. Each leg had a different race distance, inspired by some of the nation’s best-known regattas. The idea was relatively simple: a bracket-style tournament for athletes of all ages and abilities, with competitions for teams of four, or individuals. “Our first race, March Mania, we had over 1,500 athletes competing in the tournament.”ĭelSordo and his team had done some legwork beginning in February, talking with coaches to find out what they might want in order to keep athletes training during a shutdown. “We definitely were the first to make it national news, and in a literal sense we were written up in The New York Times and other big media outlets because we made it fun,” said Rowers Choice CEO Alex DelSordo. Hunger and intrigue drove participation in what felt like the first legitimate spring racing opportunity. What emerged almost immediately, however, was the inaugural March Mania team erg-race tournament, created by Rowers Choice. Many springtime regattas remained on the books through April, but the steady drip of cancellations–and the shuttering of boathouses nationwide–reinforced a depressing reality that no water racing would soon happen. It began with the Ivy League canceling spring sports, soon followed by March Madness, and then postponement of the rapidly approaching NBA playoffs.

March was the month when the chips began to fall. We pursued greatness, and we did it together. And so the things we’ll remember from the year in rowing reinforce the notion that our sport and its people are special. It happened in ways that are amazing and awesome, albeit unusual. And this year, perhaps, the stories we tell will all be a little more special because they will all be a little more different.Īnd yet there will be so much our stories have in common: the rise of national–and international–virtual erg races, the utilization of video calls and social media to train “together,” the feelings of accomplishment after months of heartbreak and despair.īecause the pure and simple truth is that rowing happened in 2020. And all of the usual events and moments and achievements and changes of a traditional rowing year–especially an Olympic one!–vanished as the coronavirus pandemic became a fact of life from one winter into a spring, a summer and now winter again.īut there will be so many things that we will remember. I’m a first-year high school head coach and 15-year veteran of the sport and I had never experienced a year like this one. These are not the things I thought would be my rowing memories from 2020. I’ll remember the joyful shouts echoing across the water from athletes’ first day back on the water–and the splashes when they flipped during their first days out in singles.

I’ll remember the rapid-fire emails to my rowers, soliciting and collecting their erg scores for our first-ever virtual rowing tournament. I’ll remember the uplifting streams of social media posts from every rowing team out there, re-haring athletes’ pictures of land training, each teammate one-upping another. I’ll remember the goofy screenshots of my athletes pumping iron after midnight.

Erg race gear