Whether she's rowed for a week or three years, if she's in 9th grade or below, she's a U16 — training with her peers and racing girls her own age.
U16 replaces what clubs used to call "novice" — a label that measured how long she'd been rowing, not her age, her body, or her maturity. U16 matches her with teammates and competitors growing on the same clock. Under the old system, a girl who started in 7th grade was, by 9th, lining up against seniors — a ninth-grader still waiting on her growth spurt, racing fully grown women. That was never fair. Here, nobody gets thumped by a girl three years older, and every race is a real measure of where she stands.
The group holds beginners and three-year veterans side by side, and that's by design: skill, not seniority, sets the boat.
And it isn't only about the racing. A boat of girls your own age is a different daily experience — teammates who share your school hallways, your homework load, your table at the diner after Saturday practice. The group holds together because everyone in it is living the same year.
And this fall is a genuinely exciting moment — for the sport, and for this club. We're anticipating a strong, vibrant U16 program of 20 to 24 rowers: two or three boats side by side at every practice, pushing each other and cheering each other on. Girls from different schools and different communities, coming together around a shared experience and a shared vision — and having the time of their lives.
| Day | Session |
|---|---|
| Tuesday | 5:30 – 7:15 pm |
| Wednesday | 5:00 – 7:00 pm |
| Thursday | 5:30 – 7:15 pm |
| Saturday | 9:30 – 11:30 am |
Four sessions a week — enough to build a real athlete, with room left for school, family, and being fourteen. The schedule is flexible and allows for partial attendance — see below.
By the end of this stage an athlete can take a boat off the rack, row it well in a crew, race it honestly, and tell you what she wants to get better at — and she'll have fallen in love with the sport and her club. That's the whole point.
U16 water time: quads and eights on the flat morning water.
Here's something we say out loud that this sport almost never does: middle schoolers should try everything. Rowing will eventually ask an athlete for her whole year — and a girl who commits after sampling widely commits wholeheartedly, with no "what if I'd stuck with field hockey" running in the back of her mind.
So while four days a week is the full U16 program and we encourage it, three days works. So does two. No penalty, no lost standing, no side-eye at the boathouse — lineups are decided by boat speed, not attendance ledgers, and if you can move the boat, you'll race. Play your fall sport. Do the school musical. Come row with us around it.
That respect for the athlete — and for the family calendar — is rare in this sport. We think it builds better rowers. We know it builds happier ones. This flexibility is a U16 promise: by U17 and U19 the program asks for full commitment, and athletes who've chosen rowing are ready to give it.
Rowing has two disciplines: sweep, with one big oar, and sculling, with two smaller ones. Sweep loads a growing body asymmetrically — leaning and twisting to one side, hard miles for a young back. Your athlete's safety is our first responsibility, so every City Island Rowing athlete learns to scull first: singles, doubles, quads, even our octuple — symmetrical, lighter-loaded, and the best teacher of boat feel in the sport.
When U16s do row sweep, they learn both sides, port and starboard, so strength develops in balance. In much of this sport a girl is assigned a side during learn-to-row and keeps it for the rest of her career — and back and rib injuries follow. We build the athlete first. The side can wait.
Every U16 gets a sister group — a senior "big" and a small family of teammates across the grades — and periodically sits in a fully mixed boat with the club's fastest athletes. She learns slide control and set by feeling them behind a girl she looks up to, not by being told. That's the close-knit machinery of this club →
Grouping is by age; opportunity is by ability. A U16 who outgrows the field can train up and race up — the same stated pathway our U17s use into the U19 block. Growth here is expected, planned for, and said out loud. See how the squads connect →
Three race days in October. Warm water, calm evenings, and the best sunsets in New York.