Robinson Crew Team: David Defeats Goliath

High school sports have always been a staple of the beltway communities in the Washington D.C. area. Football, basketball, soccer and wrestling tend to lead in popularity among NOVA citizens because those are the sports we are most commonly exposed to through the press. However, a lesser-known sport is beaming on the horizon, and the Robinson High Varsity Club Boys and Girls Crew Team is shining brightest.

Head Coach Jon Barrett has shaped his crew team of approximately 110 boys and girls into one of great success. In the last weekend of May, the team sent four boats to Nationals to compete on the Cooper River in Camden, New Jersey with about 60 other schools. Robinson’s second boats came in 6th and 11th for girls and boys respectively, while the first boats placed 13th and 25th in the nation.  In 2010, the girls won the state title and finished 7th nationally, while the boys placed 18th in the tournament.

“All in all, a great weekend for Robinson,” Robinson Crew Club Booster President Eric Martin said. “We more than held our own against the country’s elite scholastic rowing programs.”

Crew, for those not familiar with the sport, is the sport of rowing. Eight men or women each control one oar and a coxswain (boat leader) sits at one end controlling a small rudder, instructing his or her team during the four to five minute, 1500-meter race (almost one mile) through a coxbox PA system which displays information on speed and strokes per minute.

Robinson competes in only 8-boat races in order to have as many team members as possible and still have the budget to allow them to compete. And yes, it is an extremely expensive sport.

“A brand new 8-person-shell can cost $35 to $40 thousand,” Martin said. “They are fairly light and two men could easily carry one around.” 

Because Robinson’s team is varsity ‘club’ and not sponsored by the school, the team must raise its own financing each season. But the booster club and Head Coach Jon Barrett continue to find ways to raise the money. The team holds a plant sale at Burke Nursery every spring and a 5K run in Burke each fall to raise both money and awareness in the community. Community and family are words that pop up quite often when discussing the sport of crew with Martin and Barrett. Though fundraising is a definite obstacle, it has created a family atmosphere, bringing the rowers, parents, and staff closer to bond and develop chemistry, which is priceless. 

“There is a direct correlation between what [the kids and parents] put into it, to what you get out of it. Eric Martin has a daughter who is a senior and another daughter who is a junior. He and his wife have been heavily involved in making this the best possible experience and have been very helpful,” Barrett said. “It’s a big difference when you’re a varsity [school sponsored] team and you just send in a check and parents kind of drop the kids off. But [our] team interacts very heavily with parents and the school is a lot more hands off, but we get to shape the team the way we want.”

Along with the issue of raising money, comes another obstacle… restrictions. School-sponsored teams and private schools can coach and workout with their respective team throughout the entire year, whereas Robinson’s club team has only 12 weeks each spring to train together. Yet, it still has to compete against these “Goliath” type organizations during the season’s eight regattas and national races. 

“[Crew] requires a lot of repetition and you have to do it every day for many, many months. So, usually for us our freshmen are at a disadvantage,” Barrett said. “But if you’re a freshman for a team in Florida or New Jersey, you are going to get many months from the beginning of school on the water until the end of spring. By the time those teams get to nationals, those teams are pretty seasoned.”

Still, even with the restrictions, Barrett believes he has found the right coaching philosophy to allow his rowers to become elite in and of themselves.

“I have to look at it as a process of development. You get them in their freshmen year and just little by little you work them up and usually by the time they become seniors, you have kids that are very, very good and can compete with anybody.”

Going up against a big, successful crew team can be intimidating for rowers both new and old to the sport but Barrett motivates his kids through positive reinforcement while instilling the mental discipline needed to get them to the top.

“As coaches, we try to maintain high expectations but we try to make every practice as productive as possible,” Barrett said. “I try to keep their eyes open to what the teams in Florida, Philadelphia and the west coast are doing. I say, ‘this is the kind of thing you can accomplish,’ and that kind of gets them excited.”

The Robinson team trains and competes most of the time at Sandy Run Park on the Occoquan River against some of the most elite teams in the United States, including prep schools from DC, Maryland and Virginia. The Rams usually have up to 10 boats in a regatta and compete against 40 to 50 others. With hundreds of people at each regatta, it takes a tremendous amount of work to complete an event without a hitch, let alone make it happen. But once again the parents come to the rescue for Robinson.

“Each regatta has a big volunteer requirement and they are run by Virginia State Rowing Association (VASRA),” Martin said. “They are usually folks who have gone through rowing with their kids, and now they are giving back to the sport.”

But why is it that Robinson is one of the few Fairfax County schools to have a crew team and able to strive so well? Barrett believes the school’s close proximity to the Occoquan River is one big reason.

“The Occoquan River is probably one of the best places nationally that you can row. It’s well protected by the wind and it’s not populated by pleasure boaters,” he said. “The big enemy to rowing is rough water and wind and the Occoquan takes care of both of those. There’s no current on that river and you can actually row for 11 miles.”

Recruiting plays a huge role in increasing the sport’s growth and keeping the school’s success up to par with the high standards set by Barrett and the booster club. Volunteer parents set up a booth at each ‘back to school’ event to inform incoming students and their families about the sport.

“We invite them to Crew Day at Sandy Run where they meet the coaches and sit in the boats,” Martin said. “So, hopefully they can think and remember it might be a pretty good sport.”

The booster club reserves space at Robinson’s gym where they house the 30 ergometer or ergs (rowing machines) it purchased for the team to train. The machines are commonly known to be one of, if not the best cardiovascular machines to work out on and they have all the bells and whistles to follow each indivual rower’s performance throughout the season.

“We start what we call land training in early November to mid to late February. [Rowers] go to the school three to four times a week and do the Erg, they do the weight room and they run,” Martin said. “It’s a pretty grueling workout. [The erg] is used by a lot of coaches to find out where a kid is in terms of stamina and speed.”

Team members may work on the ergs during those months but cannot be coached by Barrett or any other coach from Robinson until the spring. Many of the kids go to camps and/or row for club teams in the area during the off-season.

“In the off-season, the kids will row in a camp environment and there has to be a neutral coach involved,” Barrett said. “The most prominent one is called Northern Virginia Rowing club and there is another called Occoquan Juniors.”

The team is not only incredibly athletic but also very intelligent, holding one of the highest GPAs of any sport in the school. For the two decades of the Robinson Crew Team’s history, it has had an average of three to five members receive scholarships to row in college, and this year is no exception. More than a  handful of girls and a boys have scholarships for colleges including South Carolina, George Mason, Clemson and William & Mary.

Barrett said he is proud to have watched his team nearly double in size over the past eight years. He understands, from his own experience in the sport, how grueling and time-consuming crew can be for the kids, so he slowly builds them up into their regimen.

“At the Olympics every summer, [each athlete] participates in a poll for what the most demanding sport is, and every year rowing has been chosen.”

Note: The girl’s coxswain, Emily Martin has been nominated for All-Met and the winner will be announced within the week.