Under the legal doctrine known as The Duty of Care* coaches have an obligation to avoid causing harm to the people they are coaching and inform or protect them from the known hazards of the activities they’re engaged in.
What does this mean for rowing coaches? Is it enough to say that rowing involves risks, like everything in life? Or to say that everyone should watch USRowing’s Safety Video? Probably not.
Cold water is known to be dangerous; rowers in racing shells do have accidents; and life-jackets and PFDs are known to offer protection to boaters in cold water accidents. Coaches have an obligation to inform rowers – and the parents of underage minors – of these risks and to provide them with appropriate protective equipment. The phrase “appropriate protective equipment” should make coaches and club administrators pause to think about taking young rowers out on water temperatures below 50f/10c without lifejackets or PFDs.
Unlike most scholastic sports, rowing is done on bodies of water that are inherently less safe than playing fields, gymnasiums, or field houses and always subject to sudden changes in the weather. Water temperatures below 50f/10c are universally recognized as extremely dangerous and potentially life-threatening and create a greater burden for coaches to provide appropriate safety equipment than rowing under warm-water conditions.
Coaches often say that “statistically” rowing is very safe and that rowing deaths are rare. That may be true, but it should it be emphasized that accidents happen and that capsizing in cold water can lead to death in only a minute or two. As USRowing’s Safety Video points out, even Olympic swimmers can drown quickly in cold water and even experienced rowers have capsized and drowned in cold water. Rowers and the parents of young rowers should be fully aware of these facts and should be told that lifejackets offer better protection than anything else in case of sudden immersion. They should also be informed there are many lifejackets suitable for rowing.
Rowing under safe conditions on warm water may be very safe, but rowing under dangerous conditions can be life-threatening. Dangerous conditions include not only high winds and stormy seas, but cold water. Water temperatures below 50f/10c are universally regarded as extremely dangerous and life-threatening due to cold shock (in case of sudden immersion) or hypothermia (in case of prolonged immersion). Rowers without lifejackets have died after capsizing on cold water within sight of their coaches, safety launches, and rescuers.
The Duty of Care requires coaches be aware of their responsibility to provide appropriate safety equipment for young rowers and warn their parents, as well as the rowers, of the risks of rowing without it.
As USRowing’s Safety Video advises, “coaches and administrators are ethically and legally responsible for the safe operation of the rowing program. Coaches and athletes have been unnecessarily killed and injured and programs have been successfully sued due to lax standards and/or enforcement of rules.”
Most importantly, rowers have died in the absence of appropriate safety equipment.
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* This page is drawn largely from Gary Nygaard and Thomas H. Boone, Law for Physical Educators and Coaches, Second Edition, Publishing Horizons, Columbus, Ohio, 1989. In regard to the broader subject of negligence, they also write: “Negligence is the failure to act as a reasonable and prudent professional would… (and has) created a higher standard against which coaches and physical educators may be judged.” Moreover, they remind the reader, “individuals with little or no professional training (i.e. jurors) evaluate the behavior of teachers and coaches to determine if they behaved as reasonable and prudent professionals.”