Hi Kayleigh! I’m a sophomore rower and at the moment I’m 5’7″ and around 130 pounds. I know I’m on the tall side, but I think that I could get to 120/125 pounds and still be healthy. While I do love rowing, my real interest and passion is in coxing, so I was wondering if you think coxing men in college is a viable option for me, and if it is, what I can do to get there. Thanks!
Check out the post linked below. That person was also a sophomore and I think what I said to her would also apply to you – at 15/16 years old, you’ve gotta assume you’re not done growing yet so it’s tough to say whether you’ll be the same size or not by the time you get to college.
My gut feeling is to say stick with rowing and then when you get to college, reevaluate and go from there if doing crew is still something you’re interested in pursuing. The school you go to will also dictate the likelihood of you being able to cox – the schools that are super competitive tend to be very strict about their coxswains being as close to racing weight as possible and two years from now it may or may not be viable for you to lose 5-10lbs and still be healthy. Your height isn’t as big of a deal even though you might feel kinda cramped at times depending on what brand of boat you’re in. Every body is different though so that’s something you would have to judge on your own. Club programs and the like are usually less strict about people having the natural rower or coxswain build so I would say if you really wanted to cox, you’d probably have a better shot with a program like that.
If you do eventually decide that’s what you want to do, you’ve got two options – show up whenever they have walk on tryouts and say you want to be a coxswain or email the coach before you arrive on campus and say you’ve got X number of years of rowing experience but you’re interested in walking on as a coxswain, at [height]/[weight] what’s the likelihood that you would be a good fit (literally and figuratively) for their program?