It was smooth sailing for SFU Rowing this fall as they cruised to their most successful season in recent memory.
SFU Rowing finished the season in the top 10 women's programs in the country at the Canadian University Rowing Championships (CURC) Regatta at Elk Lake in Victoria this fall, pitting their oars against some of the country's top varsity programs.
"They are students at the end of the day," says SFU Rowing head coach Kristin Henry. "They are students first. They want to perform, but I also want them to carry what they learn here to build their skills as people, holistically, and not just be about rowing."
SFU Rowing operates as a student sports club and is not a varsity sport at Simon Fraser University. There are 16 different sports clubs at SFU, which are led by students, but follow policies established by SFU Athletics and Recreation.
Henry, who was named CURC 2024 Coach Builder of the Year, has been helping with the program on-and-off since 2016 and stepped into the head coach's role in August. In September, riding a post-Olympic wave, the team had a huge number of people tryout. They took on 36 novice athletes, for a total team size of 48 student-athletes.
"Rowing is really a unique sport," says Allison Hill, a third-year SFU sustainable business student and president of the SFU Rowing club. "You spent your time outdoors, which personally, is one of the favourite parts for me. I spend almost every morning during the water season waking up early, at the lake and enjoying the beautiful scenery."
The team trains on Burnaby Lake. As a club, students pay for all their own regatta, training and insurance fees. Many of them balance school, training and part-time jobs, as the athletes don't receive scholarships.
"It's been an amazing experience," says Hill, who started rowing near her home in Las Vegas "I've met some of my closest friends and have competed on the national level, multiple times."
Coaching SFU Rowing was a full-circle moment for Henry, a former national-team rower, who began her rowing career at SFU. An athlete in canoe-kayak, Henry stepped away from the sport and played varsity volleyball at SFU. From there she was recruited into SFU Rowing, eventually moving to London, Ontario for six years as part of Canada's national rowing team.
Henry says an advantage for her club is that two of the country's biggest and most successful varsity programs, UBC and UVIC, are close in distance. It gives the SFU rowers a standard of the highest level of university rowing to achieve.
"It's exciting to see we have a really dedicated, committed and motivated group of athletes," says Henry. "I'm really excited to see what they can do over the next couple of years as a team as they build, because everyone here is this is their second winter of rowing."
