How Evanston is making rowing more inclusive for local kids

Tucked away off Oakton Street is an unassuming boathouse on the North Shore Channel that acts as the home base for a booming local rowing culture.

In summer 2021, a new middle school program dedicated to making rowing accessible to students of color and students from disadvantaged backgrounds joined the Dammrich Rowing Center community.

Historically, rowing has been a wealthy, predominantly white sport. But a group of veteran coaches established North Channel Community Rowing (NCCR) to break down barriers to entry by providing free programming, including free swimming lessons.

Now in its third season, NCCR has accepted more than 150 kids into its weeklong summer camps, drawing more applications each year, and even helped spur the creation of Evanston Township High School’s new rowing program. 

Evanston youth have embraced rowing

“When we started this, so many people told us just because you build it doesn’t mean they will come,” said Sandy Culver, NCCR co-founder and co–executive director.

But the community response, even in the middle of the pandemic when people were social-distancing, was immediate: In 2021, 36 kids in sixth, seventh and eighth grade joined the camp. By last summer, that number had more than doubled. In 2023, NCCR accepted 71 kids, of whom 57% were BIPOC, and 25% qualified for free or reduced lunch. 

Shortly after getting NCCR off the ground, Culver and her co-founder, Michael Wyman, helped Luciana Ruiz, a recent Northwestern grad, make the case for a rowing program at Evanston Township High School. The high school greenlit the idea and hired Ruiz as head coach. In fall 2022, the team held its first tryouts.

Now, kids graduating from the NCCR program at the end of middle school can continue rowing at the high school level.

“I wanted to see more people like myself in the sport,” said Ruiz, who began rowing as a freshman at Northwestern. Fueled by that desire and the skills rowing taught her – discipline, focus, selflessness – Ruiz set about designing a program that invested in students of color and kids who had felt alienated by other sports and had never gotten the chance to develop as an athlete and leader. 

“Talent exists everywhere, but opportunities don’t necessarily exist everywhere,” she said. “We’re trying to capture talent that’s there and give them access to this opportunity.”

In its first year, ETHS defied expectations. Both the girls and boys eights, boats with eight rowers and one coxswain to steer, made it to the A Finals at the Midwest Scholastic Championship Regatta in May 2023.

In fall 2023, the beginning of its second season, ETHS announced tryouts. But by the end of the first day, Ruiz realized something wasn’t working. If the team didn’t rethink the tryout model, ETHS rowing wasn’t going to fulfill the goal Ruiz and the school had committed to, of building a rowing team that reflected the diversity of the student body. In fact, they were going to perpetuate the same problem at ETHS that has gripped rowing throughout its history: The team would be inaccessible to young people of color who haven’t had the advantages of their white peers.

The next day, in consultation with her coaching staff, Ruiz scrapped the tryout plan. Instead, they would introduce no-cut tryouts and a club level as a complement to the varsity team, so that kids who really wanted to be there would have the time and space to develop.

“We meet the student athlete where they are, with whatever background they have, with whatever level of familiarity they have with the sport, and we develop them in that season, teach them, hone their skills, hone their fitness to prepare them for the varsity job,” Ruiz said.

Despite their successes, the programs have faced challenges. Both NCCR and ETHS rowing are constrained by resources, and recruiting a coaching staff that looks like and can relate to the kids they teach is critical to making the sport feel more welcoming. 

Building the muscle

Changing the face of rowing in Evanston, and elsewhere, will take time and commitment. But the payoff is worth it: Rowing teaches discipline, camaraderie, leadership and grit, according to Ruiz and Culver. For kids who’ve had to overcome hurdles already in life, having a consistent place to go, where hard work is valued and your coaches care about your development, is priceless. 

The NCCR and ETHS coaches understand that responsibility.

“Doing the work to combat inequities is an active investment of resources and labor and love and attention,” Ruiz said. “It’s not passive. It can’t be passive, or it won’t work.”

In January 2023, a few months after ETHS launched its rowing program, the school held two assemblies to introduce the student body to the sport. Administrators invited Arshay Cooper – the author of A Most Beautiful Thing, a motivational speaker and a rower who was part of the country’s first all-Black high school rowing team out of Chicago’s Manley Career Academy. 

The school set up rowing machines on the stage. Cooper raced against the school’s athletic director, and head coach Ruiz raced NCCR co-founder Wyman. Hundreds of kids attended the assemblies and when the races started, they were hooting and hollering, Wyman said.

As the NCCR and ETHS programs flourish and continue to grow, they need donations and, before too long, additional space.

“I promise every dollar, every donation goes back into making more kids know they belong in the sport,” Ruiz said. “No athlete left ashore.”

Editor’s note: The RoundTable is hosting an author talk with Arshay Cooper about his memoir, A Most Beautiful Thing, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 10. You can register for a free ticket here.