BY RYAN O'CONNOR
When Ed McCormick took over the Manchester Central High School crew team, 12 students attended his first meeting. By the time the fall season began, he had built a squad of 30.
Now, the Little Green feature roughly 80 active members, including 15 to 20 Hooksett students annually, creating one of the more formidable high school programs in the region.
And while McCormick coached the crew teams by himself the first year, he has increased his coaching staff as student participation has grown.
The only reason crew isn’t more popular among local high schools, said McCormick, is a lack of facilities.
“I think the sport, in general, attracts people to it, and if you could get the coaches and could get the space for other programs to start boathouses throughout the state, I think you’d see more teams would start,” he said.
Prior to taking over Central, McCormick helped to double the amount of teams participating in the Washington, D.C., area simply finding the space for teams to bunk their boats.
Currently, Central, Derryfield School and Concord High School share a boathouse in Hooksett, though Concord expects to open its own boathouse in the near future, creating a spot at the Amoskeag Crew Club, as well as opportunities for other teams to take up residence at the future Concord facility.
Moreover, McCormick said the influx of major college rowing programs throughout major conferences, including the Big 10 and SEC, especially women’s teams, has increased the interest among high school students.
“There are only so many kids on a soccer team, only so many on a baseball or softball team, and so on, so the other kids are kind of looking around thinking, ‘What can I do?’ And this is unique. It’s something they haven’t seen before, and it’s cool to them,” said McCormick.
As more students participate, more siblings follow. As more siblings join, more friends come along.
While the interest in the Central program continues to rise, the mentor said he’d prefer more diversity among the participants.
“We would like to see our team be more representative of Central,” he said. “It’s such an amazing school as far as diversity is concerned, and if we can reflect that through our crew team that would be great.”
Though creating a competitive crew program has been a long and sometimes painstaking process, McCormick said keeping an eye on academics makes the challenge that much greater.
“We’re definitely pushing (academics) at all times. This sport is so time-consuming, sometimes I’ve had to give a day off of practice because we realize there may be a major paper or test coming up for many of the students,” he said. “… It’s trying to keep a nice cohesive balance and at the same time trying to find a way to be competitive and still have fun.”
Most recently the school competed in Amoskeag Rowing Club’s New Hampshire Championship Regatta. While the results were less than McCormick has come to expect, he said it was a good warm up for the Head of the Charles Regatta, Oct. 20 and 21 in Boston.
McCormick described the event as the fall world championship of rowing. He said until recently it was the largest one-day spectator event in the world, but has been transformed to a two-day event to accommodate the many participants.
Still, he said crowds gather 30 to 40 onlookers deep along the two-mile stretch of Boston’s historic Charles River.
The men’s team qualified last year, and the women’s team gained entrance winning a lottery draw.
“This year we’re hoping the boats are fast enough so next year’s team gets in the Charles automatically,” said McCormick. “It’s kind of wild because while you’re trying to see how fast you are, you’re also trying to get your teammates in next year.”
The following week, the Little Green travel to Saratoga, N.Y., for the Head of the Fish event, which last year featured more than 1,000 boats, including 50 high school teams from Canada and the United States.
The women’s junior-novice four, which took gold at Amoskeag under coach Alaina Galvin, is one of this year’s most pleasant surprises, said McCormick.