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What is Crew?
If you work out at Patten Gym, you will always see members of the crew team. They seem to work harder than any other club.
Crew is the name for rowing.
The "Coxswain" is the person in front yelling stroke.
The NU Crew has novices and "varsity."
During the fall and spring, the crew team rows through the Chicago River until the weather becomes too cold and the athletes row inside on stationary urns.
Varsity members practice early in the morning before school, and novices practice in the afternoons.
The crew team races against other schools in invitationals during the fall and winter.
History (text from NU Crew Web site)
Northwestern Crew has traveled a long way since its founding in 1981 by a junior rower, Derek Grava. Derek Grava's initial crew team consisted only of a small group of people eager to row. Unfortunately, they had no equipment, no money, and no varsity support from the university. As a result, in order to practice and to race, they had to borrow boats. They would pay race entry fees and drive to races hoping some team would be sympathetic enough to loan them equipment. Over the next few years, with increasing membership and ideas for fundraising, the team expanded, and they were able to raise money for a boat and oars. They petitioned the university to become a varsity team but were continually denied. As of today, NU Crew is still a club team, but we are now have over 75 members.
Members of Northwestern Crew can be seen rowing though the center of the beautiful city of Chicago on the Chicago River just after the sun rises even during the bitter cold of November and early April. The team recently moved from their boathouse at the Chicago River Rowing Club just south of Navy Pier to a site just established this summer by the South Chicago Rowing Club on the south branch of the river. The water is better and trees line the river rather than skyscrapers.
People ask time and time again what drives rowers to wake at the crack of dawn and row in such harsh conditions with such little support. Anyone who has had the sensation of gliding along the water with the grace and power required to maneuver a shell can answer that question. The love and the passion comes from not from the sport so much as the rowers themselves. Each day one rows, they discover a new challenge that they must rise above to conquer. The more dedicated a rower becomes to his sport, the more he begins to love it. The water is a reward like no other.
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