by Sparks editorial staff A large part of the presentations we sometimes give to teams deals with the various mechanisms utilized to support athletes in the admissions process. We deal with this everyday in our counseling practice – however, with the mission of serving both the college rowing community and our clients. As such, it […]
by Sparks editorial staff Whenever we give a presentation to rowing teams about the recruiting process, someone generally raises their hand and asks what are the Women’s or Men’s “Division I 2K erg times” or similar. The question indicates a disconnect in understanding the use of 2K scores in the college recruiting process and is definitely worth exploring because there is […]
by Sparks editorial staff The Head of the Charles is a significant point in the rowing recruiting calendar for many programs regardless of whether they attend the regatta. It is by mid-October that college programs have commitment from a handful of top-level recruits and are starting to get a picture of what their early round […]
by Nate Rooks A typical high school team might row 10k to 15k on a good day, even 20k on a long day. As I covered in our article about finding the balance between being a student and athlete, college rowing brings more schoolwork, more free time, more friends, and most importantly, a lot more practice. The […]
by Nate Rooks As a former rower, coach, and recruiter at Stanford University, one of the top recruit questions I received was, “how do rowers balance school and rowing… and maybe have a life too?” From my time experiencing success on the water and in the classroom, I’ve found there are three main components that […]
by Patrick Rufo My wife and I have been a fan of the reality show Survivor for a long time. As reality show junkies, we enjoy watching the drama unfold each week. During the recent finale, the contestants were going through another round of “Tribal Council,” and as I lay there foam rolling (that is […]
by Sparks editorial staff Our consultants are often asked “what regatta results belong on my rowing resume?” or “what should my coach put in their reference?” There is a general human desire to standardize things. Much like what we’re about to discuss in this article, many have asked us about parity according to division in […]
by Sparks editorial staff As a college counseling firm, we do an awful lot of speaking with parents and junior rowers. When one peruses the online forums at places like college confidential we see one similar thread in the questions we often encounter. Namely: “how do I leverage my rowing to gain admission to an […]
by Libby Peters Team culture is inarguably one of the most important elements of a successful rowing program. As a coach, it’s great to have a handful of super-talented, highly motivated athletes, but if those individuals don’t have a similar set of priorities, values and goals, they will fall short of their potential. Although team […]
by Sparks Editorial Staff The number of students from the UK interested in rowing at an American university has been rising steadily since the government increased the maximum allowable tuition to £9,000 in 2012. After a few trips to the UK and working with a number of clients from the British Isles, we feel compelled […]
by Sparks editorial staff It’s been an interesting recruiting season for us at Sparks. We work with kids to help them identify what they connect with in the sport and establish how they would like to grow so they might determine a good selection in terms of “fit” with a rowing program and university. We’ve […]
by Sparks editorial staff The NCAA defines a recruiting service as a firm that provides information on “potential student athletes” (PSAs) to “member institutions”(college programs). Essentially, recruiting services act as third party facilitators for the recruiting process. Sparks is often mistaken for a recruiting service given the firm works with junior rowers and coxswains on […]
by Sparks Editorial Staff If you’re a junior rower and interested in rowing for a competitive college program, you already know grades and erg score are super important. Those are the first and last attributes a coach looks at and they’re the entry points for the recruiting process. Besides ergs and grades, but there are […]
by Sparks editorial staff We get a lot of questions about the recruiting benefits of institutional (short term) rowing camps. In other sports, attending an institution’s camp is one way to gain recruiting interest. However, in rowing this is not generally the case. We also receive a lot of question about longer term, more competitive […]
by Marcus McElhenney “Keep your mouth shut. Don’t tell me–Show me!” The number one thing most coxswains (including me) like to do is tell everyone just how good we are at coxing. We like to talk, because it is part of our job. So we talk, and talk, and talk some more. We tell our […]
by Sparks editorial staff The collegiate athletic scholarship has long been a mark of pride for those that receive it and their families – especially in an esteemed sport like rowing. However, there are a number of assumptions about coxing & rowing scholarships that cloud junior athletes’ understanding of them and families’ ability to evaluate […]
by Ben O’Grady Back when I was coaching and recruiting rowers at Louisville, Florida Tech, and other programs, I always looked at three major factors beyond the usuals of erg score, height/weight, and grades. Ergs are definitely important when predicting future boat speed, but I consider these other three factors to be key differentiators. This is […]
by Ryan Sparks Writing an op-ed piece in our newsletter, I feel kind of like the executives who write columns in their airline magazines–does anyone actually read that stuff? I’ll endeavor to be entertaining here, brief, and informative, though my topic this quarter is something I could write volumes on: the importance of developing self-awareness […]
by Sparks editorial staff For this article, we polled a group of coaches from universities all across the country–men’s and women’s programs–to find out what the top mistakes recruits are making during the recruiting process. If you’re a junior rower (or the parent of one) and you’re interested in getting recruited for the next level, […]
by Sparks Editorial Staff Remember when Rocky fought Ivan Drago in Rocky IV and we saw the montage of all the crazy training Ivan did behind the Iron Curtain? The communists believed that if they could impress their excellence at sport upon the rest of the world, they would be seen as a successful society […]
by Hilary Gehman Hilary Gehman is an Olympian and former head women’s coach at Cornell who is currently an associate at Sparks Consulting. She will be on the keynote panel at SDCC’s Crews to College Event. There is no magical race preparation ritual that will lead to an open water win over your competitors. The […]
by Helen Tompkins Gevvie Stone, who introduced herself as Doctor Stone for the first time recently, works as a research assistant at Tufts Medical Center while training for the 2016 Rio Olympics. After a successful 2012 campaign where she placed 7th at the London Olympics, her goal is to medal in Rio. For Gevvie Stone, […]
by Ben O’Grady During my time in the sport of rowing, I’ve seen all manner of injury: oblique strains, lat strains, lower backs, shoulder issues, sports hernias, bad wrists, and a host of other ailments. What all of these have in common is they’re overuse injuries, caused by pushing the envelope with some combination of volume, […]
by Ben O’Grady In a previous post we wrote how one of the most important advantages you can give yourself as a recruit is to submit video. This is absolutely true, and in this article we’ll talk about how to do video the right way to maximize that advantage. Hardware Video technology has come a […]
by Ben O’Grady For this article, we asked four of our contributors who also happen to be fantastic coxswains to write on the subject of coxswain gear, and specifically any gear they recommend or any unusual items that any coxswains in the audience can take advantage of. Here’s the stuff you need from some of the […]
by Laura Simon One of the toughest races to cox is the 2K course at San Diego Crew Classic. The wind and tide of Mission Bay make it a particularly challenging course, and coxswains visiting for the first time should be prepared. In this article, I’ll review the challenges and offer some tips on how to […]
by Sparks editorial staff As a senior in high school, I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I signed my National Letter of Intent. The transition from high school rowing to college rowing was definitely no walk in the park. College rowing was a means to an end for this 110lb, […]
by Ben O’Grady There’s a wide range of rowing programs to pick from and if you’re a junior athlete looking to row in college, you might ask yourself, what type of program is right for you? For this article, I want to do a compare and contrast of the various program types and add in […]
by Patrick Rufo Complex training programs, fancy functional exercises, and “rah-rah” motivational speeches are necessary to having a winning season, but many athletes and even coaches forget to plan the most important thing: Recovery. We can be so focused on the end results, we forget to plan for athletes recovering between important workouts and regattas. […]
by Marcus McElhenney I am often asked, “what is the best way to make the national team?” I love this great question because it tells me a coxswain has a goal and willing to work for it. This question is even more important this year as we will have three Sparks coxswains vying for different […]