The Vails is the national championship for division three programs. Underlying its existence is the concept of participation: it is the catch-all national championship for developing and smaller programs, and is meant to pick up anyone the upper-level championships don't. There are over fifty affiliated rowing programs (William and Mary joined this year), and each year another fifty non-affiliated programs choose to send crews as well when they have crews they consider good enough to make the grade.
The regatta was first organized by some top-flight programs as a secondary championship when only a handful of colleges were regularly successful. Gradually, the current division one leagues came into being, and these top programs stopped coming. Dad Vails were left to the rest. By the late 1980s, a small handful of crews were beginning to dominate the Vails, and it became apparent that a second tier of colleges had developed - not able to compete with the division one programs, but far ahead of the general constituent base of the Vails. These were mostly New England colleges with a handful of other established programs, notably Georgetown, George Washington, and Virginia. The small developing programs had lost their ability to compete at Vails, and the whole reason for the regatta had started to dwindle. Around 1992, a new regatta, sponsored by Champion International after which it came to be named, began to cater to the needs of these second-tier programs, leaving the Vails once again open to the hundreds of small collegiate programs.
I have found the Vails is all it is made out to be. The organization was efficient, concerned, and inclusive. The idea was to allow for the broadest possible competition. The regatta did indeed do that, and served everyone well. Despite the logistical nightmare of coordinating a wide variety of events and a hundred different colleges, the regatta ran smoothly and very close to on time. I have great admiration for the organizing committee for all the hard work it must have taken to pull this whole event off.
That said, I do have one major complaint which I did not expect to have: the race course. I have rowed on the Schuylkill four times before (two races, and two afternoon-before-race practices). I was therefore aware of the usual complaints about the course, namely that it has a bend in it and that the lanes aren't equal. I had not found this to be much of a problem when I had raced there, but after observing this regatta I am beginning to reconsider.
First of all, when I raced there before it was merely for a regular season match race against Penn and Cornell. While the bend was annoying, plenty of race courses around the league have bends. But a championship race course in this day and age should be straight. A perfectly straight six-lane course does exist nearby - on the Cooper River in Camden, New Jersey, which has become an iportant rowing venue in the last couple of years. Therefore, it would not be too hard to move the regatta there - the same organizing committee could continue to be based right where it is now, so this would not inconvenience anyone. Mostly, it would be nice not to have to start a race on a stagger (in this case, about three seats per lane).
Speaking of staggers, the next most noticeable problem is the finish line. I am told (or was told when I raced against Penn several years ago) that the finish line is not staggered. It is supposed to be straight to the course, but the grandstands and riverbank bend inwards here and make it appear staggered. When I raced there myself, I won my races by such enormous margins that the order of finish was quite clear. However, many of the races at the Vails were quite close (my three crews were eliminated by a combined total of 2.5 seconds). The coxswains told me they had no idea where the finish line was or who was in the lead during those crucial final strokes. The buoy line continued past the finish, and there were no marked or enlarged buoys to mark the line. This should be better marked - either by putting down better buoys or by stringing a line of rope over the finish as what marks the 400-meter-to-go line (shoreline to end-of-island). A finish line rope could easily be connected to the bridge that crosses the river after the finish, and thus the rope would not have to extend all the way across the river. Better buoying might be simpler. It does not bother me that I was confused or that most spectators were confused - the fact that the coxswains were confused is what counts. The line must be clearer.
Lanes one and six are supposed to be the slow lanes. One is supposedly much shallower and runs along the riverwall which deflects all waves. Six is in the middle of the river but supposedly gets slow around the the island in the last 400 meters. I can't speak for this from observation. When I raced there as an undergraduate, we used the middle lanes. Nothing was apparent to me this year, but I don't know the river well enough to judge.
There would be much to do about transfering the regatta out of Philadelphia, where it is a tradition. However, there is nothing about this regatta which says it should be in Philadelphia. It did not move to the Schuylkill course until the 1950s, after it had already been going for several decades in other sites. I would see nothing wrong with moving it to a straighter, more clearly-marked course. Camden comes to mind mostly because it is so close to Philadelphia that it would cause no hassle or inconvenience to the organizers at all to move the regatta there. And considering dominant forces in the Philadelphia city government are opposed to the regatta (they are a bunch of clueless idiots), now would be a good time politically to leave the city.
Leaving Philadelphia would also provide a solution to one other problem: Temple University. The programs represented at the Dad Vails are mostly club-status programs which receive little or no funding from their colleges. The handful of varsity-status programs which attend come mostly from small colleges without huge student bodies. There is one notable exception, which is Temple, a large university with a fully-funded program which draws from a mostly Philadelphia-area student base and therefore gets a lot of people who rowed prior to college. Temple has not surprisingly dominated this regatta for decades. When a bunch of other programs - many with varsity status, some with club status but which had been around long enough to have substancial independent funding - started to challenge Temple's dominance by the late 1980s, the Champion Regatta was founded. All of these other programs quit Vails, but not Temple. Temple's argument, of course, was that Vails was a Philadelphia tradition as was Temple rowing, but that is a lame argument. If the program really cared about the sport it would compete on its own level and strive to become ever better. What we have seen instead is program after program pass Temple by. As they do, they leave the Vails and move on to Champion. Temple has still been better than most other programs at Vails, particularly in the varsity eights where the usual fight is for second place. It was actually nice to see Temple's women fall yesterday, as had several Temple crews before them. As some of the current Dad Vail-level programs are finding proper funding, either through gaining varsity status or by having been around long enough to have built up a big enough base of alumni support, a new flight of crews is beginning to emerge with a shot of challenging Temple. But if the uderlying concept for the Vails is to serve as a national championship for unfunded and developing programs, then Temple and some of the other big programs may need to move on and graduate to Champion. This would only serve to improve the level of their rowing, which can only be a good thing for them and for the sport as a whole. Before Champion existed, there was no where else for them to go if they weren't competitive with the first division programs (which they weren't). Now that Champion is well established, it is time for the Vails to possibly reaffirm what sort of program it means to cater to. I am getting mixed signals.
But these are just rants. I found the Dad Vails to be everything it was made out to be. It was an exciting - if long and tiring - trip. My rowers were completely overwhelmed, but I suppose that will help them next year. This was the first year William and Mary has gone to the Vails as an affiliate and has had a full squad. The experience that the students took away can only help our program grow, because they can pass along this excitement to next year's freshmen, so that next year the entire team is ready to expect all of what Dad Vails offers.
Thanks again to all the organizers. You have run an excellent regatta.