One Team. Dedicated.
All athletes, coaches and parents support each other. We treat each other fairly and cultivate an environment of mutual respect. We strive to improve teamwork, leadership and rowing skills and healthy development of all athletes. All students, parents and coaches deliver on their responsibilities and compete with respect among ourselves and our rowing community.
Team History and Success
B-CC Crew is commonly used when referring to Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School’s rowing team. The team strives to develop a competitive rowing experience for students at B-CC High School. The club's philosophy, in support of this mission, centers on the coach-rower relationship and personal responsibility for the rowers. B-CC Crew is a “club sport” started in 1993 with a group of 26 students (13 boys and 13 girls). In 2010, B-CC Crew became the high school’s largest sport with more than 80 athletes, equally divided between boys and girls. B-CC Crew Boosters, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, was created to support the team. We continue to grow, and currently over 110 athletes are members of the B-CC rowing team.
We are competitive regionally and compete as a member of the WMIRA rowing league of schools around the Washington, DC metropolitan area. We have a history of success in our league and at the Stotesbury and SRAA scholastic regattas. It is typical for us to have numerous male and female athletes, boats, and coaches honored by the Washington Post as "All-Met" and several athletes continue to compete at the collegiate and national team level.
Rowing for B-CC
Dating back to the Egyptians, the sport is competitive and requires physical strength, flexibility, and cardiovascular endurance. Since there are few opportunities to become a competitive rower prior to high school, it is difficult to get a “head-start” in the sport. We run a novice program for athletes in their first year of the sport, regardless of his or her academic year. After completing the novice year novice athletes are promoted to row with the varsity squad. The boys and girls each have varsity and novice athletes, for a total of 4 squads. Financial assistance is available for those who need it.
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Coaches and Equipment
The team employs nine coaches during the fall, winter, and spring seasons. Many have coached at the collegiate level, and all rowed in college. The team owns over ten boats for use during practice and competition.Rower safety is paramount, and no athlete is on the water without accompaniment by a coach-staffed motor launch equipped with safety and communications equipment. A new boat costs around $50k, and athletes are trained to handle them delicately.
Club Sport Status
Despite its popularity at B-CC, rowing in the Montgomery County Public School system is a “club sport,” meaning that the team receives no financial support or other assistance from the school or the county. To receive financial support from MCPS, a sport must have the participation of two-thirds of the high schools in the county. Currently, 5 public high schools (out of 25) in Montgomery County have rowing teams: B-CC, Walt Whitman, Walter Johnson, Montgomery Blair, and Winston Churchill.
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What is rowing?
Rowing is the sport of propelling a lightweight boat, called a shell, with oars as fast as possible. Currently, competitive racing shells are made of carbon fiber. There are types of shells reflecting the two types of rowing: sculling boats (each rower uses two oars) and sweep boats (each rower uses one oar). In sweep boats, there can also be a coxswain (pronounced cox’n) who steers the shell. Rowers face opposite the direction the boat is moving. The coxswain also directs the pace of the rowers and executes a race plan. B-CC Crew races sweep boats that have four rowers and a coxswain (Coxed Four), and eight rowers with a coxswain (Eight). Each rower uses both hands to pull a single oar to move the shell forward.
Seasons
Competitions with multiple boats are called regattas, and we compete in races that are 1,500 meters in length for Spring sprint regattas and much longer (5,000 meters) for Fall regattas. Fall regattas consist of time trials, called head races, where each boat is rowing against the clock. Boats are sent out in 15 to 20 second intervals. During winter we train on rowing machines, called ergometers ( or "ergs"), in Bethesda. In Spring regattas the boats are racing against each other side by side to be the first to cross the finish line.
