<p>ilovethattree,</p>
<p>Glad to help. </p>
<p>Neat username! Does it, by chance, refer to the enormous buttonball (sycamore) on the front lawn of the Academy Building at Deerfield? Gotta love that one!</p>
<p>Leanid: Thanks! No I have used this username for websites for a long time, way before I knew about deerfield, but now, my username is dedicated to the sycamore tree on the front lawn of the Academy Building at Deerfield!</p>
<p>Good, it should have something dedicated to it! It is magnificent!</p>
<p>Best of luck in gaining admission!!!</p>
<p>thanks!
10char</p>
<p>bump 10char</p>
<p>i think kent does row at the henley a lot</p>
<p>TO EVERYONE: I am serious about rowing, but I would prefer to go to a HADES. I just want to be able to go somewhere that has pretty good rowing and nice facilities. I don’t need crews that win in every-single race or multi-million dollar rowing facilities. It’s the school that I am looking at the most, not the rowing program. I started this thread purely to find out what the rowing was like at the HADES schools, and didn’t really want to find out about anywhere else but the HADES schools. Thanks.</p>
<p>@ilovethattree - I do hope you realize that HADES is just a made up term that is only used on CC. There are at least a dozen other schools that are as impressive as these by any metric that you might care to use - prestige, average SAT score, selectivity, college matriculation. The truth is that quibbling over which schools “belong” in “HADES” is just, well - dumb. </p>
<p>I agree that you should look at the school before facilities, etc. But that’s what I’m encouraging you to do. Look at the schools, MANY of them, not just the ones that one student, over a year ago, decided to include in a group of ultra-selective schools and add to a message board’s lexicon.</p>
<p>Sorry if I appear harsh. I just don’t want to see a great kid limit herself (himself?) to what a few people consider “the best” schools. It seemed like that is what you were doing, only looking at Hotchkiss, Andover, Deerfield, Exeter and SPS. I apologize if I was wrong.</p>
<p>I did some rowing in Australia also, it appears we start younger than the US. I was never very serious like you appear to be though. HADES doesn’t count for much in my book because it doesn’t include Groton ;)</p>
<p>ilovethattree, as for Hotchkiss, it has no rowing. Why? I have no clue. It is located a spit away from a beautiful lake and, I understand, it is also near other sizeable water areas. If Salisbury, which is 3 or 4 miles down the road from Hotchkiss, has crew, why doesn’t Hotchkiss have this sport? Got me.</p>
<p>because its hotchkiss… 'nuff said 
haha jk</p>
<p>When I was at Hotchkiss, I asked why not and they said because the lake wasnt deep enough plus they have sailing which is great.</p>
<p>Actually Blue, my understanding is that the lake is TOO deep (the deepest in the state) and it gets waves that are too high.</p>
<p>But I’m hardly and expert. I just remember reading it on this board. Maybe it was a Hotchkiss student?</p>
<p>Oh mabye it was that. I’ll defer to neato on this matter, as it wasn’t a big deal to me so therefore I wasn’t listening hard. It was something about the lake not being right anyway. Why don’t they have the tours AFTER the interview so you’re not nervous and distracted the whole time.</p>
<p>Their lake is way too small for rowing which involves long straight stretches, sailing does not require long straights. The depth of the lake is not critical, it’s the length. The lake where S’bury rows is about 10 miles away and there is little push from the school to have a sport based that far from campus when all of their other sports are based on campus.</p>
<p>The Hotchkiss lake apparently cannot support a 1500 meter course. They could row at nearby Camp Sloan, where Berkshire has carved out a pretty nice course, and has a boathouse.</p>
<p>As for Salisbury, they have an outrageous boathouse and venue. Andover comes to the northwest corner of CT every year as their coach prefers to row on that protected lake course v. the murky, running, strorm stewn river course of theirs. That said they pretty much smoke the Crimson Knights…</p>
<p>fun is fun - I would like to mention that my prep school lake can’t support 1500m… and yet we rock. Just saying. </p>
<p>Because you are (apparently) so good, those coaches should know NOW that you are applying. You should meet them, meet with a member of the team, etc. Also, if you are looking at how competitive a school is then check out the 2009 NEIRA results on row2k (as well as the past few years). </p>
<p>another good thing to keep in mind - some schools don’t have the most flashy boathouses or tanks, etc. but that DOESNT mean they are any less of a team. I have one school in mind with an amazing boathouse, erg room, team room, etc. and yet my team with a small boathouse and no team meeting room whip them. </p>
<p>also make sure to ask about the flexibility of the team when you meet with coaches or go on a re-visit day or whatever. and make sure you ask a member of the team - preferably top two boats (they would feel it the most) because some teams go off of seniority, some erg scores, some height, you get the jist. </p>
<p>hope it helped and good luck!</p>
<p>Amusingly, I PMed the same advice and provided the NEIRA and Head of the Charles links. Agree totally on boathouses too! Andover’s boys 8 was fantastic last year. Think all or most of them graduated, but I am sure they have another group in the pipe line. And Kent is always good, as well as more than I can mention.</p>