Especially at junior level where juniors in other sports might play/train 2-4 times a week with a rare few (swimming comes to mind) training every day. All that happens then is, a club can only buy limited amounts of equipment, can’t afford to pay for professional coaching or even a minimum of good coaching education for the non professionals( Everyone needs to learn somewhere). Usually they also have a huge rower to coach ratio, which then leads to diluted coaching and injured/frustrated rowers in the future.
If you are not a university club and aren't given huge amounts of money then start charging for the amount of time the athletes are actually at the club training for. For example, lets take a junior rower training 6 times a week for a total of 10 hours a week. Over 40 weeks that amounts to 400 hours of time using the clubs resources. A typical soccer club training 3 times a week for a total of 6 hours amounts to 240 hours over the 40 weeks.
Now though lets look at the expenses that the soccer club have to pay..... hmmmm a few balls and some gear and the maintenance of grounds. Maybe they have changing rooms and so on. Still nothing on the boats rowing clubs have to get/maintain. So 240 hours vs 400 hours both to be average(not medal winning at all) in each sport. (I'm taking numbers out of the air for the soccer)
| Soccer Club | Rowing Club | |
|---|---|---|
| Yearly costs for club | 10,000 | 50,000 |
| Time training | 240 hours | 400 hours |
| Membership fees | 100 euro | 150 - 250 euro |
The numbers in the table above are approximate figures but you can still get the jist of it. Rowing clubs need to be charging more. But then you have the other side of the coin that says what about those that can't afford to be paying those huge amounts of money. Shouldn't they be able to enjoy the sport too? Yes I think they should.
Rowing is known for its "elitism" and it being a favorite sport at many English boarding schools. My idea, would be for clubs to run learn to row camps as they already do, and then identify individuals with talent. If upon hearing about the full cost of the fees the parents are just unwilling to pay then a form of concession could be made, maybe in the form of a half price membership or even free membership but again only if the family needs it.
Yes I know there are flaws in this plan and there are probably many other ways that it could be implemented, but to finish it off, I have seen many clubs struggling with debt and terrible rower to coach ratios which could both be fixed with more money. At the end of the day its only the rowers who suffer when there aren't enough boats to go out in or only one coach who can't give the proper attention needed to the kids as they learn.
They(the kids) then go off and learn bad habits and later unless the situation improves keep loosing races due to horrible technique or even worse end up injured or quitting.
