Rowing

Rowing is the ultimate team sport; everyone in the boat has a role. The younger girls are nurtured and inspired by the older girls and our rowing club is more than a club: it is a family. It is not necessary to have excelled at another sport to become a rower.

Rowing is a Senior School sport but, because the season starts in the third term (September), girls in Grade 7 are invited to join the rowing club. Their first experience of rowing is at the pre-season rowing camp, held during the last week of the August/September holidays.

A summer sport, the season ends after the South African Schools’ Championships, held during the first weekend of March. Training sessions take the form of water-based training at the Victoria Lake Club in Germiston, and land-based training in the ergo room at school.

We are extremely proud of our many successes since our inception as a rowing club in 1993. The premier schools’ event in the rowing calendar, the South African Schools’ Rowing Championships, has been won by St Mary’s on 21 of the 30 occasions we have competed. St Mary’s has won the prestigious Schools’ Boat Race 15 times in this event’s 22-year history.

Over the years, our girls have been selected to travel overseas as members of junior national squads, representing South Africa in countries such as Egypt, France, England, Belgium, China, Lithuania, Holland, Germany, Brazil, Japan, Bulgaria, Italy and Paris.