Your $79.75 Pays to Put You in a Boat: Grab an Oar and Get Out There
Wake up at five. At the boats at 5:45. On the water at 6 a.m. For freshman Justin Starr, an undecided major, this is how he starts his day most days of the week. Sometimes he gets to sleep in, on days when practice begins at half past six. For Starr, and the entire men’s crew team, this dedication is out of pure love for their sport.
Joe Krakowiak, Tom Mazzone, and Jim Wynne volunteer their time to coach the team, which consists of 45 students. Because it is a club sport, the roster is open to any student, and both males and females can become coxswains, who direct the rowers and steer the boat.
Starr says, “Anyone who wants to wake up early, get in shape, and meet great people should join.”
The team is barely funded by your mandatory student activity fee. The budget for the team is around $23,000, of which $7,000 goes to insurance costs. Rowing is a very expensive sport. A basic line boat costs between $15,000 and $20,000. Last year, the team took out a $20,000 loan to pay for a new boat. According to vice president Stephen Odrzywolski, a senior exercise science major, $4,000 of the budget this year will go to paying off the loan.
The team tries very hard to alleviate the financial burden that is constantly upon them. They work at numerous SA events, including Fall Fest and Spring Fest. Recently, they provided security at the Sphere Entertainment Complex in downtown Buffalo.
While SA mandates that a club cannot collect dues, the rowers are often forced to pay for expenses like race entry fees, travel, and uniforms with their own money. Once all of their money is spent, they have no other choice but to donate to themselves.
Starr says the $80 he has had to pay so far is “pretty cheap.” When he rowed in high school, (at Rochester’s Brighton High School) he had to pay as much as $200 a season, plus $50 for each regatta.
The club’s president, Anthony Clarke, adds that “many of the teams we compete against collect $400-$1400 in dues annually from each of their members. We would need to do that in order to keep a club running with no funding from the university.”
“The mandatory student activity fee is the only thing that keeps us afloat,” Starr says.
This is all in contrast to the woman’s team, which also started as a club sport, but has since gained NCAA Division I status, thanks to Title IX. Title IX mandates that all money spent by college athletic departments must be equally spent on men’s and women’s sports. The transition of UB Athletics to Division I-A helped the women’s crew team, but the men’s team is continually left in the dark. The current budget of the women’s crew team is around $250,000.
“It’s all Title IX,” Starr says, “If it wasn’t for that, we’d be a Division I sport now.”
In spite of their club status, the UB men’s crew team rows with the dedication of a D-I team. The team practices every morning of the week except Sunday. On days when they row on Tonawanda Creek, the athletes must meet for carpools at 5:30 a.m.
By 6 a.m. they are out on the water, where they row for an hour and a half.
“Practices include whatever the coaches feel we need to work on. It could either be a long endurance piece, short hard sprints, or even technical drills,” Odrzywolski says. On days when they do land training practices consist of hard weightlifting, and rowing on indoor rowing machines called ergometers.
When all is done, they get back to their rooms at 8 a.m., when most students are just waking up. Starr says that he does not mind practicing so early. “It may sound bad but it is really not,” he says. “It’s good to workout in the morning. You feel wide awake in class while everyone else is groggy.” Odrzywolski says that “nothing beats seeing the sun rise over the water every morning.”
They also compete like a Division I team. They have raced well known programs such as Temple, Brown, Marietta, Marist, Army, and Purdue. The regattas they compete in include the Head of the Schulykill, which is the second largest regatta in the nation. Their recent accomplishments include first place finishes at last year’s Head of the Ohio regatta, and the Knect Cup.
It is your student fee that helps fund these athletes, and they are more than grateful for it. While they would like to be promoted to Division I status, it is a small portion of your mandatory Student Activity Fee that currently allows them to keep rowing, season after season. For more information, log on to www.ubcrew.com.
