This got me thinking, rowing is not by any means a cheap sport. A boat costs about $50,000. Then, you have to consider that nearly all of our competitions are out of state and require coach buses and hotel stays. Because of these expenses, New Trier is the only public school in the area and one in a handful of public schools in the country that has a team.
I will vouch for the team, saying that we do work quite hard, and that we are by no means a group of rich kids rocking back and forth on our boats. On the other hand, our competition is made up of mostly prestigious prep schools and extremely wealthy public schools. By excluding a huge population of the US are we making ourselves less of a sport than any other real sport.
This has huge impilications, when you consider that colleges get about the same amount of recruits for crew as they do for mainstream sports. Think about the way that this effects who gets into America's most prestigious institutions. What do you think of rowing? Can it even be compared to other sports?
This is an interesting post Sam, and by contrast, Cross Country is possibly the cheapest sport in existence. All you need is a pair of shoes to run, and a pair of spikes and a uniform for races. To run a meet you need little for than a few flags, some rope, some spraypaint, a field or forest preserve, and volunteers. Nearly every school in the country has a cross country and track squad (though track is more expensive, requiring the oval itself, hurldes, pits for jumps, a pole vault station, and more coaches. But anyway, on your point of how you rowers are "making ourselves less of a sport than any other real sport"... people say the same about running. Mostly because it is so simple. After all, as they say, for most sports you need one ball, for ours you need two.
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