by Hartmut Buschbacher, Igor Grinko, & Mike Teti
The time has come to focus on the exciting prospects of the future of rowing in our country through Sydney 2000 and beyond. We have the strongest feeder system in the world in our colleges and clubs and thus possess the potential to become the strongest and most successful world rowing power. Thus we must move past the conflicts and obstacles of the past and act as a collective whole to generate and implement new and creative ideas for the future.
The three of us will be working very closely together as members of the same team in the next 4 years. By working together along with all the other talented collegiate and club coaches, we know we can put fast boats on the water.
We encourage all athletes, coaches, and administrators to work with us in reaching our goals in Sydney, 2000 - 6 Olympic medals, 3 of which are gold. Getting to this ultimate goal will mean a few World Championship titles, lots of hard work, and a great deal of fun along the way.
As USRowing Head Coaches these are our goals:
We are all on one team. We are a team comprised of athletes, coaches, board of directors, committees, staff, and the larger rowing community/US Rowing membership. In all of the different components of "our team" we should strive towards becoming the number one rowing nation. ..masters, juniors, recreational, elite, etc. Specifically in terms of our Olympic and World Championship Teams, we need to return to our rich and long tradition of winning gold medals for the United States of America.
Our goals in 2000 are to capture six medals, three of which are gold (note: no U.S. gold medals since 1984). USOC funds will continue to be strictly utilized towards this performance en& While funds will be logically geared towards this elite pool in 2000, funding will cover our developmental, junior, pre-elite, and elite groups the three years prior to the Games. The goal is to cast as wide a net as possible at the beginning of the quadrennium to ensure that all the necessary talent is encouraged, identified, and developed early on. Subsequently, that net is put out for those top performers as we approach 2000.
We must do a better job of communicating to the larger membership as well as to our elite athletes that the success of one is mutually beneficial to the other. Success in rowing at any level is good for the sport of rowing. Every US Rowing member should be proud of "their team" in 2000.
The goal here is to support and create rowing and competitive opportunities around the country to involve a minimum of 300 athletes and coaches in pre-elite and development camps every year. These competitive opportunities will include but not be limited to Identification Camps, Development and Pre-Elite Camps, Selection and Formation Camps, National Team Testing, International events on U.S. soil, USRowing National Canadian Henley, USRowing Youth Invitational, American Championships, Junior and Senior World Championship Trials, etc.
We want to encourage the large number of talented collegiate, club, and junior coaches to become involved with the development of our National Team athletes. It is critical to establish a feeding pool of coaches that parallels and compliments our athlete development pipeline. We need to encourage American coaches to learn from and work with each other. Coaching education is an integral part of this effort and thus the inception of the Level II Coaching Conference in Miami.
By providing these competitive opportunities to athletes and coaches at the end of the competitive season, the organization then provides an incentive program for athletes and coaches at each level of the athlete/coaching development pipeline. Athletes and coaches are more strongly encouraged to perform and participate in the year-round programs knowing that a reward for excellence exists at the end of the line.
Specific Costs for these programs in 1997: |
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| Full World Championships Team, Aiguebelette, France (All 24 events) | $329,600.00 | |
| Nation's Cup, Milan, Italy (14 Olympic events) | $169,600.00 | |
| Junior World Championships, Hazewinkel, Belgium (2 8+s & 2 1 xs) | $ 86,300.00 | |
Specific Costs for these programs through Sydney 2000: |
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| 3 Full World Championship Teams (24 events/year) | $988,800.00 | |
| 2 Nations Cup Teams (14 Olympic events/year) | $339,200.00 | |
| 3 Junior World Championship Teams | $258,900.00 | |
| 1 Pan American Team (22 events) | $ 50,000.00 | |
| 1 Olympic Team (14 events) | $100,000.00 | |
| $1,736,900.00 | ||
This goal is extremely critical and one that will require a massive team effort. See above costs.
In conjunction with existing sponsors or newly attained event sponsors we must strive to create an international race with television coverage and high visibility and marketability. It is critical that we do a better job in promoting our sport at all levels, especially in America, Canada, Pan American countries, & Australia/New Zealand as a counterpart to the current overwhelming European presence.
Our goal should be to provide financial incentive and encouragement for 3 to 10 clubs who demonstrate the commitment and ability to support both the year round post-collegiate athlete as well as provide summer rowing opportunities for both collegiate and junior athletes. These clubs would be locally supported, employ strong coaches, and provide post-collegiate athletes with a home and affiliation. While this funding could not possibly support a large number of clubs on a full or parttime basis, such financial incentive will hopefully encourage more aggressive development at the club level.
For the summer of '97 the bidding process by clubs will be implemented with the incentive being designation of that club as an official USRowing Development Camp for that summer. Such an incentive while not immediately financially supportive would certainly provide athletes and aggressive promotion for the club by USRowing staff and committees.
Clubs will be strongly encouraged and solicited to submit bids detailing their plans~ to support athletes, Some of the issues which will be addressed in the bid will include:
Continue to support the training centers as High Performance Centers
In 1997 the women's training center will relocate to San Diego and row out of the USOC Arco Training Center. The sculling program will remain~ in Augusta and housed in the newly built Augusta Training Center (to be completed February, 1997). The men s sweep program will relocate to Princeton. In 1997 all 3 coaches will be working together to provide the best training scenario for each squad and athlete and thus have all 3 centers open to all elite athletes.
While the women will be relocating to Arco, this USOC Training Center will remain open to all of our disciplines. Additionally, USRowing approved short-term camps will be based at Arco such as preelite, development, identification, and junior camps as well as collegiate and club programs. Use of this facility by non-resident athletes and coaches will grow as needs for such camps are identified.
One key will be to place many of our newly recruited collegiate athletes in sculling boats at all pre-elite and development camps for subsequent summer competitions. Each of tl~e camp coaches should strive to ensure that many of the participants have at least spent some quality time sculling over the course of camp. This concept has already been presented to all participants of the fall identification camps.
The early singles trials are intended to give our club and former national team athletes the opportunity to compete for small boats first, and then subsequently enter the larger pool with our collegiate athletes for the team boats. The trials should always be later in the collegiate/club rowing season to give all of our collegiate athletes and coaches enough time to prepare and become involved.
There will continue to be open trials for the remaining twenty events using the open '96 Olympic Trials "two out of three" format.
This event will serve as the final competitive opportunity for our pre-elite camps as well as provide other collegiates time to relocate to clubs after their collegiate season and join "all-star" collegiate boats. Nationals would serve as trials for our Nation's Cup Team, again providing incentive for clubs to produce ~eater performance at this event. All of our elite teams will be expected to participate.