Our club is run from Hillcrest High School in Hamilton.  We provide rowing training for children at our school from Year 9 – Year 13 (aged 12 – 18 years). We have both boys and girls involved and current numbers are 18 rowers + 4 new novices who started with us this month. We train on the Waikato River and are fortunate to have the fantastic Karapiro rowing facility within 30 minutes drive of the school.

Each year we try to get the rowers, coxswains and their coaches to spend five days at the Mangakino Rowing Center for an intensive training, development and team building camp.  Our kids have an opportunity to try different combinations of boats, sweeping and sculling and an opportunity to perfect their techniques. It is an intensive, tiring but equally rewarding experience for them. The camp is run by dedicated parents who provide all the meals, support and pastoral care while they are there. The kids get up really early about 5.30am and have ‘first breakfast’ then row and come back for ‘second’ breakfast. The balance of their time is spent learning about appropriate nutrition, technique lessons and more rows on the lake. A lot of food is consumed!  The kids get a huge amount out of this camp and we fundraise to help with the expenses of camp as well as purchasing row suits for competitions.  At present, we are one of the only school rowing clubs that do not have appropriate rowing uniforms, our rowers wear a singlet top and spandex shorts to row in and the oars often get tangled or caught on the singlets during racing.

For the last two years we have been able to hold our heads up high against the private schools that we compete against – we had 5 “A” finals at last year’s Maadi Cup – New Zealand Secondary School Championships and gold and silver medals at the North Island Secondary School Champs.

The training camp will allow the rowers the opportunity to grow, develop and refine their skills in the sport they love.  Through hard work and focus they will aim for excellence.

It is hoped that we will be able to purchase rowing suits, this will enable us to race without our oars catching on clothing.