About Us

Juniper Rowing Club was established in 2002 to allow adult rowing enthusiasts to participate in rowing. We take our name from the original name of the canal we row on - Juniper Canal. Our rowers' skills run from novice to collegiate experience. Our goals are to have fun, to improve our rowing skills, and to occasionally compete.

We're a small club of about 30 rowers. We practice four days a week - Monday and Wednesday evenings, and Saturday and Sunday mornings. We don't have a coach, but we help each other with technique and we try and improve. We're mildly competitive. Racing is optional, you aren't expected to race, you can if you want to. Most races have a novice category where people new to the sport can get the taste for racing.

We participate in the HRRC Erg Pull competition in February, Rocketts Landing Sprints in Richmond in June, HRRC Row For The Cure in June, our own regatta in August, Head of the James (Richmond) and Head of the Lafayette (Norfolk) in October.

Some of our rowers rowed at college, some at school, and some in the Navy. We have some very competitive and experienced rowers, and we have a lot of people who never rowed till recently. We have equal numbers of men and women. We have a mix of ages from late teens to seventies. There's no segregation by age or gender. On our open-row days, if you turn up, you get in a boat with everyone else and you do the best you can every day and everyone helps everyone.

We are a social club. After Wednesday evening practice, a lot of us go over to El Toro Loco for dinner and chat. That's where club business often gets done, and it's fun. Saturday mornings, some of us go to breakfast at Sunrise after practice. We have a Club Christmas party in December, and the Annual General Meeting in February.