NCAA declaration

I'm sure that many of you have read about the changes to the NCAA Division I championships that were posted on Row2k today. The addition of automatic qualifiers and the elimination of individual awards for the top finishers in the each category were the main changes. It's obvious that rowing is trying to become comparable to other "team" sports in the NCAA and yet almost everybody connected with rowing that is not the case.

I am hoping that the language that our sport's leaders are using to make changes to our championship format reverts to an ATHLETE-CENTERED discussion and not about an NCAA-centered discussion. If there are three separate "events" in the Division I championship, varsity eight, second varsity eight, and varsity four then the winners of those events should be recognized. Winning a race at the NCAAs should be rewarded the same way that our junior, masters, and national team athletes are across the board.

Automatic qualifiers...that's another story.