User:Pixzzl/Cooper Junior Rowing Club
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The Cooper Junior Rowing Club is a youth crew based on the Cooper River, and is an aggregate successor team for both the Moorestown Rowing Club and the South Jersey Rowing Club.
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| Motto | Amor, fide, labore. |
|---|---|
| Motto in English | Love, trust, hard work. |
| Home water | Cooper River |
| Founded | September 1st, 2024 |
| Former names | Moorestown Rowing Club, South Jersey Rowing Club |
| Membership | ~120 |
| Colors | Royal blue, navy blue, white |
| Website | |
| Acronym | CJRC |
| Events | |
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| Notable members | |
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About
The Cooper Junior Rowing Club is a regional crew in the Southern New Jersey and Philadelphia area, founded as an effort to merge both the Moorestown Rowing Club with the South Jersey Rowing club in 2024/2025 race seasons.[1] The club is a competitive racing crew, and competes in events year round.
It is both a sweeping and sculling club, and competes competitively in both disciplines. MRC was predominately a sweeping crew and SJRC was a sculling crew, and after merging they allowed all athletes to row either. The club has 8, 4, 2, and single shells, and races 8+, 4+, 4x-, 2-, 2x-, 1x typically.
The crew's overall goal is to send as many athletes as they can to compete annually in the USRowing Youth National Championships in Sarasota, Florida.[2] Athletes are encouraged to work towards qualifying for Youth Nats in the USRowing Mid-Atlantic Youth Championships.
The crew's motto, which is seen on their emblem; "Amor, fide, labore." This translates to "Love, trust, hard work." The crew derives its motto from the Moorestown Rowing Club, which CJRC is the successor to.
Races
Clash on the Cooper
The Clash on the Cooper is a small regional scrimmage hosted by the Cooper Junior Rowing Club on the Cooper River. It was first hosted on Sunday March 30th, 2025. The first scrimmage was between just four competing teams; CJRC, Brick City Rowing, Whitemarsh Boat Club, and Nereid Boat Club competing.
The race took place on the Cooper River 2k race course, which is also CJRC's home water. The scrimmage originally had women and men's U17, U19, and novice events, from 1x, 2x-, 4x-, 4+, 8+. The races are organized in heats in which boats race side by side the event as a whole, as there are no finals.
Cooper Cup Regatta
The Cooper Cup Regatta is a race hosted on the Cooper River annually, typically taking place on the last Sunday of April.[3] The race was originally named the William and Sarah Cooper Cup Regatta, and was first hosted in 2004.[4] As the race was previously directed by the South Jersey Rowing Club, the Cooper Junior Rowing Club took over in the spring season of 2025.
It is both a Scholastic and Junior Club race, and is a 2000 meter race. The regatta has events for 1x, 2x, 4x, 4+, and 8+. There are heats for both women and men. The regatta typically garners around 60 clubs[5][6], with an average of about 600 entries[7][8] for races. The regatta organizes all U19 and U17 events into time trials to qualify for finals. Any event under 15 entries has a single final, whilst events over 15 entries have both an A and B final.[9]
Board
In the merger, the Moorestown Rowing Club's board of directors, also referred to as the "Commodores", took over as the Cooper Junior Rowing Club's board. This is because the South Jersey Rowing Club did not have a board of any sort, and was run solely by the coaches. The board has a total of nine members, with five titled positions.
These positions, in order of highest to lowest position:
- President, Marisa Cohen
- Vice President, Cait Leggett
- Program Director, Harry Carroll
- Treasurer, Dana Belland
- Secretary, Stephanie Shultz
The duty of the board members is to manage the club as a whole, which means managing financials, communications between coaches and parents, chuckwagon and regatta supplies, as well as the management of the coaching staff. There are four more board members who do not have a title, these are Sal Petriello, AJ Mieskolainen, Christie Dragan, and Tara Blauth.
The board is also tasked with hosting the end-of-season banquet for the team, a tradition carried on from the Moorestown Rowing Club. The banquet is a formal event in which the year's seasons are recapped over a dinner, along with awards and recognitions announced by coaches and given to athletes of their choosing. The banquet takes place between the USRowing Mid-Atlantic Youth Regional Championships and the USRowing Youth National Championships as mid-atlantics marks the end of season for athletes who don't qualify for Sarasota.
Coaches
The club is led by MRC Director Harry Carroll in collaboration with SJRC Head Coach Lindsay Clark. The coaching staff has eighteen active coaches, twelve coming from MRC, and four coming from SJRC, as well as two coaches who joined with CJRC.
The team's system rotates coaches between rowers and their lineups on a daily or weekly basis depending on lineup permanency. However, this excludes novice rowers, whose coach remains consistent as long as they are in a novice boat.
Merger
Early talks and controversy
Beginning in the spring season of 2024, the South Jersey Rowing Club ran into financial trouble, and began talks with the Moorestown Rowing Club to merge the crews. This was a controversial news at the time because MRC would essentially be pulling SJRC out of debt, while combining the teams as equal entities.
MRC parents and rowers were also frightened at the prospect of the team bringing on 60 new rowers, while only receiving three new coaches. This would change the ratio of coaches to rowers, which to the athletes and their parents looked to reduce the individual coaching that rowers would have.
Alongside the financial and coaching arguments that arose, a third topic of debate came up about the future of the team. As the SJRC refused to sign an acquisition deal, opting for a merger, MRC would lose its team identity as the "Moorestown Rowing Club." Although the team had rowers from different townships and other schools, the club would lose it's name and colors.
Trial season
Over the summer of 2024, between the spring and fall season, the teams agreed upon a trial run under a joint team sanctioned by USRowing named "Cooper Junior Rowing Club." In an email sent out to parents of MRC by the commodores, the teams would practice and race together under the team, while coaches determined if the athletes and the team as a whole worked out well. This trial season would turn out successful for the team and displayed the likelihood of a merger.
In another email sent to parents leading up to the winter training season for spring, the commodores confirmed that the teams would continue practicing together. While still labeled as a trial, the team was firmly underway towards the final merger, having released two different uniforms during the fall season, and sharing practice facilities owned by both teams during the winter.
In the final week of the winter season, which steadily continued into the spring season, the MRC website was overhauled, and displayed the CJRC colors, with information added to it about the new team. Alongside the overhaul of the MRC site, the SJRC site updated it's homepage to display a post which states that information has started migrating to the new CJRC site. The CJRC site is a duplication of the MRC page under a new domain, identical in all but URL.
Finalization
In the spring season of 2025, the crews officially merged for good under the CJRC name, and had a successful first official season. On June 10th, the team sent 68 athletes in 12 boats to Sarasota[10], Florida for USRowing Youth National Championships after a successful regatta at the USRowing Mid-Atlantic Youth Regional Championships in May.
The commodores, or board of directors, of MRC were named the board of directors for CJRC as the SJRC had no board.
Racing and training
As a competitive racing crew, the team practices year round, as well as racing in all seasons. The objective for the team is to ultimately send as many athletes as possible to the USRowing Youth National Championships in Sarasota, Florida.
Races
The team competes in many races during all seasons. The most prestigious races the team competes in are the Head of the Charles Regatta, USRowing Mid-Atlantic Youth Championships, and the USRowing Youth National Championships. During the fall season the team typically races in about six races. During the winter and spring season, the team races about seven times, and also competes in two scrimmages.
Training
The crew practices in three different locations, depending on season and boating assignments. The primary location for practices in the fall and spring season is on the Cooper river, where the team owns bays two (MRC's) and four (SJRC's) in the Camden county boathouse. Athletes also train in the team's warehouse gym location across the road from the boathouse. The gym is used for lift days and is generally practiced in at least once a week by rowers. This location was owned by SJRC prior to the merger. The third location the team owns and practices in is a retail space purchased in the Moorestown Mall, which has been organized into an erg room. This erg room is the primary training location during winter, however is infrequently used during bad weather conditions in other seasons.