In America, it is uncommon for athletes in their first year of collegiate rowing (experienced freshmen or complete novices) to row in varsity boats. Instead, they have their own category, the exact rules for which depend on the league in question (as does the alternation between the use of the terms "freshman" and "novice").
I am a big fan of freshman crew as its own entity. I think it is a great experience for frosh to have the chance to race in their own division in their first year in the sport (or at least in their first collegiate year). What is important is to get four years out of rowers - without this very positive experience in their first year, it becomes harder to keep them around for that much longer.
As far as I am concerned, the most important thing about freshman crew is to get people enthusiastic so that they come back for three more years. A four-year rower is more valuable to a program than a one-year phenom. It is less important to me that the frosh crews win than that they fall in love with the sport. If they come back, I'll have three more years to get them to win. I think novices will, in general, get more out of rowing in their own category as than they will if they were racing in lower varsity crews.
More than likely, the best frosh would only be competing for seats at the bottom end of the varsity squad. In any established program, I'd think that novices would more likely dwell in the lower boats if the squads were fully integrated. If a first-year rower went straight to the top, it would probably signify weakness of the varsity more than strength of the freshmen. And wouldn't that frosh be happier in a fast frosh boat than a slow varsity one?
As for freshmen who had the opportunity to row before college, I let them train with the varsity in the first half of the Fall while the novices are learning to row. Sitting them in complete novice boats and teaching them to row from scratch would be a waste of their time. But I think putting them on varsity crews in the spring, as some programs do, sends the wrong message to the novices. Most of the best rowers in this country learn in college, which is one of the nice things about this sport. High school rowers (I was one myself) have a lot to learn from the great athletes (with no prior rowing experience) who inject a lot of vigor into the sport freshman year in college. Segregating them only sends an elitist message that the newbies are not welcome or are somehow second-class. That's a bad message to send to what will be the core of any successful varsity squad in the long term.
I've also seen some rowers who made no impression as freshmen, but who fell in love with the sport and came back, turn into quite good rowers by the end of four years, and while they were gradually transforming they were great contributors to their teams. I think the novice crew experience is fantastic to produce these sorts of people, too, and over-rapid integration would only discourage them.
Having coached over in England, I do have some experience with not segregating the novices beyond the Fall (Michaelmas) term. There is no novice collegiate event generally after the Fall (there is a "novice" category in England, but it means something else since the English have a funny way of using the wrong words for things). As a result, the squads can get merged quickly. Many programs are also so small as to need to filter a novice or two into the top crew by the Spring season. In my time over there, I had the pleasure of coaching several people who leap-frogged over more experienced rowers to make the top crews. Some programs are too closed-minded to realize this possibility and condemn some of their better prospects to the lower crews where they fail to develop properly. Other programs are quick to integrate the squads and do some good development.
One problem, though, did come on rebuilding years when a majority of the first eight might contain novices. While I was indeed able to produce some extremely fast crews like that, those crews suffered from the inexperience when they went up against more seasoned first eights. They learned quickly, of course, but it sometimes would have been nice if they could have learned against other crews which were also learning.
After my experiences abroad, I do actually integrate my crews for training. I am building a men's program, so last year my priority crews were my frosh, and the small handful of varsity rowers trained with them and then got segregated into a 4+ for the season, while the novices raced varsity 8+s if need be. Last year's frosh came back, and now I've got a bunch of keen second-year rowers. Once this year's novices got good enough to benefit from the experience, I started borrowing some for odd practices with the Varsity squad, and have had at least one fully mixed row per week in the period between November and March. Winter land-training training was integrated, too. It creates a more competitive environment for everyone, and it helps bring the novices on faster. But when it came down to the Spring season, novices are competing in the frosh events where I think they'll get more out of it.
My program is young and growing. Almost all of the varsity rowers (men and women) are sophomores (2nd years). Therefore they'll have two more years after this one. They know that, and are excited about welcoming this year's frosh to the varsity squad next year. They understand that it is more important to build a team full of committed people who have fallen in love with the sport as freshmen, than to think short-term about this year only. That is a very mature attitude. Meanwhile, my sophomores are having to fend for themselves in the Varsity category, but will benefit from a higher level of competition this year and will be more seasoned next year when this year's novices move up.
If any novices could make varsity crews this year, it would still be very unlikely that that would make the difference when going up against more experienced varsity crews anyway, and it would weaken my frosh crews so that no one would benefit. And it would knock sophomores into boat classes that don't exist around here (no one near us can support 3V or 4V eights) without competition, so that these people would quit from the frustration of having no one to race against. I'm not willing to give up on my rowers that easily. That, of course, is assuming that any of my novices could beat out any of my varsity rowers - probably true for my men last year, but not so likely this year with a healthy, if young, varsity squad.
There remains one reason to put frosh on varsity boats, however: to fill out varsity boats that would otherwise be short personnel. Two injuries on my men’s varsity squad and academic problems for one athlete on my women’s varsity squad left me shy of two eights, and I filled their seats with freshmen. But the freshmen who got promoted were not taken from the top end of the freshman squads. I would have to argue in favor of filling the frosh boats first, and then plugging any empty seats in the varsity. So I took the top two men and the top woman who had failed to make the respective frosh eights. The logic is this: we did not want to hurt the first freshman eight, and taking the best rower (or two) out of that and putting them in the 2nd Varsity (2V) would slow down the 1st Freshmen (1F) more than it would speed up the 2V. But the bottom end of the frosh squad gets a little dubious. The 2V must be competitive, but the frosh four doesn't need to be so competitive. Plus, the 2F for men and women is only a four this year, when priority must go to the eights.
I am not so sure what I would have done if there had been enough frosh to make two eights plus spares instead of a 1F eight and a 2F four plus spares. I would have had to argue that the 2F as an eight would take priority over the 2V for all the same reasons that a freshman category exists in the first place.
These days, it would seem that it would not be a proper "Letter from America" if I did not criticize the NCAA (that dastardly demented demon which has taken over women’s collegiate rowing in America) for something or other. Well, incidentally, the NCAA does not understand the concepts I have been discussing and is opposed to the continuation of the novice category. It remains to be seen the damage the NCAA will do to women's rowing in the long term (not just on this issue, but on virtually every issue). The NCAA is bringing some short-term benefits to women’s rowing, but those who support the take-over are, in my mind, being very short-sighted.
I think this is yet another example of the bureaucrats of the NCAA not having the smallest understanding of our sport. One of the best parts about this sport is that most people who compete in college learn to row for the first time in college. This system has actually produced faster crews, not slower ones, as some great athletes have come to this sport in college and have often beaten out ex-high school rowers. Gutting the novice programs - either doing away with them entirely or poaching those frosh recruits to row in varsity boats - will actually weaken the overall level of the sport, as it will not provide many of these athletes with the worthwhile intro year that gets them hooked and helps prepare them with the tools to come back and row varsity for three more years.