Prospective Rower FAQ

What is a typical weekly schedule?

What do practices look like?

What is winter season?

I'm a High School rower, can ACRA help me get into Amherst?

During the fall and spring seasons, there is one water practice every day from Monday-Friday. We also have land training at least 3 days a week outside of practice.

On Saturdays, we either practice in the morning or compete in a regatta. If we are competing in an away regatta, we use our Friday practice time to de-rig the boats and load them onto our trailer.

Water practice is typically in the evenings Monday-Friday (5-8 pm) and in the mornings on Saturday (8:15-11:30 am). A bus picks us up from the Alumni Gym at 5 pm sharp, and we usually get on the water around 5:45 pm. We spend around 1-1.5 hours on the water working on technique and fitness. Depending on when the sun sets, we get back to the dock, put the boats away, and then head back to campus to eat dinner as a team. We aim to get back to campus around 7:45-8 pm.

Many of our rowers love the winter season, as it is a time to focus on fitness and prepping for the spring race season. We do not have water practice, but there is daily land practice Monday-Saturday. These land practices are done in small groups of typically 5-9 rowers and are organized to fit into your academic and extracurricular schedules.

We lift 3x a week with the varsity Amherst Athletics Trainers, who create team lifts and work with us on weight lifting technique and mobility. We erg (a term used for rowing on an indoor machine) 3x a week to work on endurance and rowing fitness.

Unfortunately, because we are a club team we have no influence over admissions. We encourage you to apply to Amherst and join our team once you get in! We have had many people on the team who rowed competitively in high school and decided to continue with us once they arrived at Amherst.