I really want to continue rowing in college but I am 5’3″ and my erg scores are not great. Do you think it would be possible for me to cox in college (maybe as a walk on?) even though I have never done it before? If so, how would I go about expressing interest in it?
Definitely! Coxing as a walk-on is pretty much going to be your only option at this point since coaches aren’t going to recruit someone who doesn’t have any experience. Plus, if you’re a senior right now, I think the recruiting period might be coming to an end so it’d be too late to go that route anyways. If you know that’s what you want to do though you might talk to your current coach(es) and see if you can switch to coxing permanently starting this season. If you’re a junior right now that’d give you roughly three seasons of water time, assuming your team has a fall season, which would put you in a really good position if you decide to walk on wherever you go to school. (I’ve gotten the impression that experienced walk-on coxswains are like gold to freshman coaches because it’s one less person they have to teach and it lets them focus on the rowers rather than worrying about teaching the coxswain how to cox while also trying to teach kids how to row.) You could keep rowing if you wanted and walk-on to a team with no coxing experience but I think that if you already know you might want to cox in college, it just makes more sense to switch now and get that year and a half of experience in before college starts.
As far as expressing interest, all you have to do is show up to the boathouse whenever the team hosts their walk-on tryouts. You’ll likely seen signs posted throughout campus and/or you’ll see the team out recruiting during the first few days of school. If your university holds some kind of student involvement fair where all the groups, clubs, athletic teams, etc. show up to promote their stuff, you can seek out the crew team’s table and get put on their general interest sign-up sheet. Someone from the team will then send out an email with details on when/where to show up. You could also send the coach an email once you arrive and say that you’re interested in walking on.
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