Photo courtesy of Halden Williams
Covenant welcomes its first rowing club in the spring 2026 semester. The group plans to start meeting regularly later in the semester and encourages everyone to attend their interest meeting on Thursday, February 26 at 7:00 p.m. in Mills 280.
To help with the cost, the Covenant rowing club has decided to partner with the UTC rowing club. “[To] help the teams get off the ground and for the sake of being as competitive as possible … Covenant and UTC rowers will essentially exist as one team. The goal is to share coaching resources, to share boats, to get together, to practice together,” Abraham Mako, the leader of the UTC rowing club, says.
In the fall of 2026, the Covenant rowing team plans to participate in various rowing competitions. Covenant College is just twenty minutes from Head of the Hooch, one of the world’s largest regattas. This is a highly anticipated event in the rowing community, one that, according to Arielle Ekland ’29, “takes over the whole city.”
Ekland, one of the group’s leaders, explains the value of having a rowing team on campus. Not many Christian colleges are actively recruiting members for a rowing team. Ekland expresses her excitement to “row alongside kids our age and represent the kingdom in a sport that [is underrepresented].”
Maggie Mayer ’29, who has experience as a rowing coach, says, “Our hope is that it will be a recreational thing where people can explore the sport of rowing for the first time,” she says. Ekland points out, “It’s a gorgeous sport and historically Scottish, which is just funny to me.”
There are many benefits to joining the Covenant rowing club. “Besides it being really good for you … it’s a good way to serve the community. We’re going to be doing river cleanups and stuff like that to serve people off the mountain since we’re up here so often,” Ekland says. Mayer comments, “Being part of a team and being able to work with my body and accomplish something powerful that I [am] proud of [is] a huge thing.”
In the spring semester, the rowing club plans to meet once a week in the gym to begin strength training. Next semester, they will offer at least two meetings per week to give more people a chance to get on the water. The club’s scheduled Learn to Row program will ensure that anyone can participate, regardless of experience.
Thumbnail photo courtesy of Halden Williams.