By Chelsea Foster
This year, Let’s Row Boston launched the Boston Public Schools Indoor Rowing League.
Schools submitted weekly data to their CRI coaches that summarized total meters and meters per grade. At the beginning of each week, the total meters for each grade were added onto the Indoor Rowing League website.
After a few sessions, teachers began to see their schools progress and they became more invested in the process. Some of our teachers used Post-it notes at each erg for the students to record meters throughout the class, and other teachers had their students write on a whiteboard throughout the class with the grade at the top, snap a photo and record each grade at the end of the day. A few teachers were fortunate enough to have access to a few chromebooks for students to record on a google form, which automatically creates a google sheet to sort and add the meters together to add them on the recording sheet.
The Indoor Rowing League was an opt-in program for schools in Let’s Row Boston. Over a dozen competed and submitted scores for 4th through 8th grade students. The league’s debut ‘season’ was set to end this week, prior to YETI. The leading total schools would receive recognition at YETI and at their spring field trip. Due to school closures, the League ended earlier than expected, but still with positive results! Mildred Ave Middle School and Warren Prescott Middle School, two former YETI champions, placed in the top 3 highest totals, with Haley Pilot School from Roslindale also in the triad. Due to the exciting leadership of our partnering teachers – Sadie Soto & Kevin Gadson from Mildred, Angel Scott from Haley Pilot, and Vicente Vallejo at Warren Prescott – students racked up some incredible totals.
Due to school closures, the Let’s Row team is facing a new call to action: the Virtual YETI. The event models created by Kara White and Eddy Mog that have been utilized in the YETI and Mini-YETI, a North Middlesex County event for Growth Middle School programs, the Let’s Row staff will be running YETI as a virtual competition. After schools resume, they will be able to compete in relay-style racing in their own schools with equipment provided by Community Rowing, Inc. They will upload each event’s results to the Indoor Rowing League, which will display each grade’s winners!