By JP Phillips
Contributing Writer

It may be a surprise that Unionville High School (UHS) has a crew team here in “horse and cow country,” as head coach and West Chester resident Chris Tolsdorf phrased it during a February information session in the high school cafeteria. The other 70 or so teams in their league are located much further east.  

“It’s pretty unique that we even have the program here,” Tolsdorf said. “But rowing itself is just an incredible, unique sport.”

The team is led by a dedicated group of coaches: Head Coach Tolsdorf, who also leads the girls varsity teams; UHS graduate Maegan Hailey, who coaches novice girls and runs the summer camp; varsity boys coach Michael O’Dwyer; and Erin McGill, a UHS graduate who manages novice boys.

According to Coach O’Dwyer, Unionville’s rowing program started in 2014 when some UHS rowers connected through the Newport Rowing Club located just south of Wilmington, Del. The athletes and their parents wanted their own team, and the Unionville Crew Team was born. One of those original members was Justin Best, who subsequently competed in the Olympics twice, winning a bronze medal in 2020 as part of a team of eight rowers and then a gold as part of a team of four rowers in the 2024 Paris competition.  

“That was the first gold medal for the U.S. men in that event since 1960,” O’Dwyer noted.

Seeing one of those sleek, long boats slicing through the water on a beautiful spring day is truly a wonderful sight. But as every member of the crew team knows, it takes a lot of training, practice and hard work to make it seem so easy and graceful.

Rowing at Unionville runs for three seasons, meeting six days each week. Winter training takes place in the high school gym, where athletes build endurance and strength. The spring season begins in early March, when the team members bus 30 minutes to the Newport Rowing Club where the boats are stored to practice on the Christina River. Spring is also when the competitive races start against other clubs. Fall competitions continue on the water with practices and longer races.

Boats are manned by either four or eight rowers and one coxswain, who keeps everyone coordinated, calm, on course, and working at their fullest. Coxswains are the only athletes that look forward; rowers face backwards. The ideal coxswain is small in stature with a motivating personality. In a four-rower boat, the coxswain is tucked under the bow, and in an eight boat they are seated at the rear facing the rowers.

Being on the team requires a major commitment from both the athletes and their parents. The Crew Team Board is made up of parents who manage logistics, transportation, dues and fundraisers. They also coordinate volunteers which are needed for everything from donating food to manning the “Chuck Wagon” which provides meals to the team during events. Since the team is not financially supported by the school district, parent funding and participation is imperative.

With training occurring six days per week, athletes quickly learn how to manage their time well.  While they can participate in other sports, Tolsdorf made the priorities clear.  

“Academics takes priority over everything else,” he said. “Then comes rowing. Plan the work, then work the plan. It wouldn’t be a meeting if I didn’t say that.”

Tolsdorf explained how rowing bonds people and they have a ready-made group of friends.

“A nice side benefit for a lot of athletes is then they take that new gift [rowing] that they have, and they take it to college,” he said. “In terms of college scholarships, women's rowing, in particular, they’re the largest percentage of high school students who go on to do their sport in college, and it's not even close. So that's also a great thing.”

West Chester resident and UHS senior Jack Develin, one of the team’s captains, talked about how the individual aspect that exists with many other sports —where one catch or play can change the trajectory of a game doesn’t apply here.   

“You have eight guys in a boat (if it’s an eight), all trying to work together toward the same goal. Everybody has to be in perfect unison with each other to make that boat go as fast as possible,” he said. “So, if one person’s not necessarily doing the same thing or one person’s trying to do a lot, it's not necessarily going to make a difference. Winning and losing comes down to how well you are in sync and working with your crew mates. It’s like the ultimate team sport, as coach Chris [Tolsdorf] likes to say.”

UHS senior and coxswain Chris Koncir from Chadds Ford has been rowing throughout her UHS career.  

“I did track and field and I loved it,” Koncir said. “I was good at it. I thought that that's what I was. I thought that that's what I was going to do in college. And then I just kind of didn’t like the fact that, like, it was so me versus my teammates, and I didn't like competing against [them].  But with rowing, it’s like, we’re all in the same boat and I'm not a coxswain without all eight rowers and we're not a boat if one rower is missing. It's just a very tight-knit community, and we all need to depend on each other.”

An unforgettable memory was made when the fastest teams competed at the Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston last fall. According to the competition’s website, 12,000 athletes and tens of thousands of spectators travel to the Charles River for this event each year. “That was the largest regatta, I think, I've been to personally,” Koncir said. “Seeing like so many famous rowers at the Charles was just such an amazing experience.  People come from all over the world to that race and we got 18 [place] out of 90 boats, and it was the highest we ever placed in the top 20.  It was just such like a starstruck moment for us because we’re such a small program and it was like really, really exciting.” 

Unionville Crew holds several summer camp sessions which are led by Coach Hailey and focus on middle schoolers. “It's a nice little pipeline, just to give them a fun, short, introduction to rowing without it being as high commitment as the rowing season is once they get high school,” Hailey said. “We have 18 campers each week, so they'll go in the water every day, all four days. There will be at least two varsity members in each boat to help them and support them on the water as well as a coach.”

Tolsdorf explained that many sports are team sports, but rowing is unique. 

“You get away from school, you can get down on the river, you're an out in nature, you're out in a completely different place,” he said. “You’re going into Philly, you’re going into the Mecca of rowing in the United States—the Boat House Row. That aspect of rowing is something that athletes just really love. It’s getting you out of your normal school environment in something completely, completely different.” 

The coach added, “Rowing is very different in that everyone has to get things done and at the exact same time in unison, at the threshold of their abilities. And they all have to do the same thing over and over and over again with no timeouts, no ability to regroup, and you’ve got to keep yourself in time with everyone else. And that is incredibly unique.”

Toldsdorf also talked about another different aspect of rowing.

“The whole goal in rowing is to not stand out,” he said. “That is an aspect of a sport that a lot of people really love and it generates just tremendous bonds. And you can start the sport brand new, without knowing anything else, and discover lifelong friends, and a side of you as an athlete that you didn't even know existed.”

More information, including summer camp schedules, awards the team has won, and more about the team can be found on the website at www.unionvillecrew.org.