Does your club structure serve masters rowers?

Alison Dutton mixed quad on dock

Most clubs think they do. They have a masters program. They have a coach. They have a slot on the water on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Job done.

But here's the question worth sitting with: does your club serve the competitive masters athlete who wants to race at national level and the 68-year-old who joined last spring and just wants to stay on the water for the rest of their life? Because those are not the same person, and a single training stream cannot genuinely serve both.

Coach Zak Lewis from Ottawa Rowing Club put it plainly: masters rowing is a diverse spectrum of needs and abilities, and creating equal opportunities across that spectrum is genuinely hard. His prescription is practical — a competitive stream, an introductory stream, and a "row for life" stream, built from whatever resources your club actually has. Not every club can do all three. But most clubs can do more than one, if they're honest about what they're currently offering and who is quietly falling through the gaps.

There's one more idea in Zak's thinking that we find particularly useful: faster masters rowers don't have to train in isolation. Putting them in boats with your senior and U23 athletes benefits everyone. The younger rowers gain experience rowing alongside people who understand patience, racing and technique; the masters gain the intensity and power that comes from training with faster crews.

So before you read on — take thirty seconds and think about your own club. Which stream is well-served? Which stream barely exists? And who is quietly stopping coming to training because there's nothing quite right for them?

That's the problem worth solving.