By Bruce Ware, President PWRC and member of the Coach Mastermind Group.
The Prince WIlliam Rowing Club’s season is off and running; a small subset of the Club is prepping for our first 1K sprint regatta – I am entered to row a 2x with my wife, and we’re the oldest boat in the group with the biggest handicap!
In my role as President of the Club, I’ve been trying to incorporate some of the great ideas that have come up in our discussions on this Coach Mastermind web-chat. Yes, Rebecca sets up a main topic for the session, but when I join in, there’s always something else I need to talk about, to get advice about, and maybe even just to vent some frustration.
The other participants bounce ideas on how to handle some of the usual challenges each of us faces as masters rowers and coaches of masters, and I make frequent use of those suggestions.
“People join in because they know how broad and multi-faceted our discussions become. And what can I do to boost those numbers, to get more people to join the discussions?“
Like I said, the topics are multi-faceted and change every session. For example, I know that one of the best ways to recruit and strengthen a masters rowing club’s numbers is to market the club as a “fitness for life” approach that can meet the health and fitness needs of many differently-abled people. One corollary method is to offer a “pay-to-row” option, where people can come out to row as their work-schedules and other commitments allow.
My Club has not offered this option, but we are starting to see some requests coming in asking for this sort of arrangement. With a Club of nearly 100 members that has a mixed mission of “high-performance” racing, recreational and “social” rowing, and a large learn-to-row novice component, I have to recognize that I cannot just open the floodgates to “pay-to-row” without impacting our coaches’ ability to set line-ups, especially the racing squad coaches.
How would you handle such a request?
My treasurer says “no way! too much of a headache!” I know my racing squads and their coaches would object, so I have to exclude them. And LTR novices have claimed a “seat” in a boat that someone else who we had to leave on the “waiting list” (club resources and assets being limited, we had to cap our LTR novice group at 32 for this year) could have purchased and used.
How do I allocate financial resources to a Club equitably? The LTR novices don’t need anything special, as they already have boats and a full coaching staff. The intermediate “recreational/social” squad only occasionally has some small teams that want to compete in a regatta, but they don’t require a lot of extra resources. The sculling squad is small – 7 or 8 of us, we have our one coach and plenty of shells to use – a 4x, 3 or 4 2xs, and a half-dozen 1xs – so our major additional expense would be for entering and traveling to regattas, and those are not frequent events.
So, the racing squads, which make up only about 30% of the Club’s numbers, routinely claim over 70% of the Club’s funds. Is that fair that a large percentage of the members’ dues is used to “subsidize” that rowing activities of a minority?
These sensitive topics are the kind of things we talk about on Coach Mastermind!
You should be there {{ subscriber.first_name }} because you might have encountered these sorts of situations in your own clubs, and could offer suggestions on how to handle it. I coach juniors and high school kids, not masters. I’ve offered to coach masters, but don’t want to give up my own rowing!
But running a masters club means I need to rely heavily on masters coaches, and this is one of the best places I can come and get that kind of help.
Please, when Rebecca posts next month’s session, make the effort to join us.
