What Makes a Great Rowing Club? - ROWAPALOOZA #2

Welcome to Ready, Row! USA, this is producer Charlotte Pierce, here with Mark Wilson, Jim Dietz, & Aquil Abdullah, who we’ll hear from in a minute. 01:29 We see that rowing changes lives in all our various activities related to the rowing, so we started this podcast and livestream to connect and collaborate with the rowing community, from boathouses to masters rowers to Learn-to-row to legends of the sport, and vendors and people that make the equipment that we use. 01:45 So just to make it clear, we love rowing, we love talking about rowing, we advocate for access, inclusion, and diversity in the sport and we love hanging out with rowers like today’s guests Mark, Jim and Aquil and the other panelists on our Rowapalooza 3rd Anniversary/100th episode celebrations this month. So I’ll go do some magic in the background - take it away, Mark! 02:01 First I’d like to acknowledge our amazing sponsors, including Resolute & Sykes USA boat builders and Burnham Boat. 02:11 So you guys take it away and I'll pop on at the end to talk about sponsor offers and how people can get involved with the podcast. 02:17 AQUIL how did you guys get that that fancy background there that's what I want to know 02:22 MARK: So we'll just kind of rotate around a little bit about clubs and and rowing in the united states I think we'll start with where you both got your start in the sport, as Olympians and before. 03:09 AQUIL: what is it uh beauty beauty before age or age before beauty? I don't know which one is which here, Mark you you said you set me up for failure! lol.Anyway, I got my start in washington dc at woodrow wilson high school. so I started rowing in my senior year of high school 03:27 and it was Joe Shuttleworth who was my first rowing coach and he had the unfortunate task of dealing with me, I was a pretty good athlete at the time but didn't know how to put an oar in the water! I think that one thing that I am always grateful for are the varsity guys who suffered for months with me rowing extremely poorly, just hauling on it the oar, until I actually learned how to row. 04:01 and I think that that that for me that was very important because I always vIewed rowing as a sport that wasn't … until I started doing it and to be in a position where I got to row with some guys who were who were pretty good or at least knew how to row really set me up to enjoy the sport pretty quickly. 04:24 MARK:That’s awesome that your team brought you along at Woodrow Wilson HS.. Jim, when did you start your rowing odyssey? JIM DIETZ: I started when I was a freshman in high school. I was lucky enough that my high school was affiliated under the umbrella of the new york athletic club.Jack Soldier was our coach and he was considered the pied piper of the Rowing club back in the day. His motivation was to start rowing in as many high schools and colleges around him to be a feeder system for the new york athletic club and the strategy worked! I mean he started saint helena's blessed sacrament norrishell high school He started programs at St John's, Iona, Fordham, Kings Point, the merchant marine academy, stony brook, and all those guys rowed through the club. Then in the summers they rowed for NYAC, so we were a very powerful club back in the day when NYAC actually produced athletes, they just didn't finance them as they do today. 05:31 JIM: I think most of the people representing the new york athletic club on the Olympic level today don't even know where the boathouse is, and that's a shame because I think the more you get more kids involved like we were involved, the better. Like Charlotte said earlier in the show, rowing changed my life, changed the lives of a lot of the guys that I rowed with. You know some of those guys are just getting out of coaching today, so we've been in it for a good 50-plus years. 05:59 MARK WILSON: Yeah, I think the the commonality between both of your stories is that the opportunity was given and the coach was there and didn't have any preconceptions of really anything other than wanting more people to row, [It wasn’t a status thing, he wanted wanted Aquil and the rest of his team to row wanted jim and all the kids around new york city to row. For me, it was the same same sort of thing. I started rowing at the University Wisconsin, EDITING IN PROGRESS TO BE CONTINUED!