Peter Williams: School rowing popularity augurs well for future

Apart from the Olympic Games and occasionally the world championships, rowing mostly slips past my sporting radar.

Despite New Zealand crews being hugely successful, I suspect this is how most of us think about it.

After all it's a dreadful spectator sport - the competitors start as specks in the distance 2km away and only come into decent view with about 300m to go. Close races are often confusing on television too because the camera angles can't tell you with any certainty who's in front.

But it's hugely popular with high school students and more than 2500 were at Lake Karapiro last week for the national championships.

It's the biggest secondary school sports event in the country but, even so, it would only be of passing interest to those who didn't have kids taking part.

But this year the final two days were live on TV - all day, 9 to 5. If you were channel surfing last Friday and Saturday and became bored or disenchanted with the cricket test, it was hard not to miss the rowing championships on Sky Sport 3.

Once there, it was addictive viewing. The commentators didn't seem to know many names among the crews but, as it was interschool competition, they could almost be excused as long as they identified the correct schools.

And the range of schools taking part and winning medals was impressive. Big city, single-sex schools generally dominate national secondary school championships and, in the big boys' boats, that's the case in rowing too.

Hamilton Boys' High School won the premier titles in eights and fours. Their winning time in the eights was an impressive 5m 53s, only 25s slower than some eights at last year's Olympics. But look down

the grades and you'll see some outstanding returns from smaller schools too, especially some in the South Island.

James Hargest College from Invercargill won two titles: in the under-17 single sculls where Hayden Cohen beat his school mate Ollie Behrent into second, then those two teamed with James Lilley and Toby Pascoe to win the under-17 coxed quad sculls.

St Kevin's College in Oamaru revived the spirit of the legendary coach Rusty Robertson, who hailed from that North Otago town, to win the under-15 girls' eights. Two of that crew, Johanna and Caitlin Kearney, placed second in the double sculls.

Rowing is not cheap. Mike Stanley, stroke of two world champion eights and now coaching at Westlake, reckons a new skiff costs about $40,000.

His school owns more than $2 million of equipment, all paid for by community fundraising and trust fund grants. Other schools without those financial resources rely on local rowing clubs to provide boats in the hope they'll attract new members through the school programmes.

This is rowing's biggest hurdle - keeping high school athletes involved after they finish year 13. It's a challenge common to all sports as young people move into tertiary education or the workforce, and time for other things becomes scarce.

But Rowing New Zealand sees some success in their regional academies keeping the high achievers interested and involved as they come through to senior level.

This is a classic case of a sport where international success has attracted thousands of new recruits. The country's had some famous gold medal successes over the last 40 years, but until the last decade they were mostly in big boats.

Rob Waddell, Mahe Drysdale, and the Evers-Swindell twins changed that. The small boat gold medals inspired groups of kids all over the country to try rowing.

That expansion of interest was personified by the thousands at Karapiro last week. With this huge youth base, you couldn't help but think New Zealand rowing's international success will continue for a time yet.