In the United States, children learning to row and student athletes have long been expected to row under the same safety standards as adults and Olympic rowers. That is dangerous and young rowers have drowned as a result.
Coaches have an obligation under the legal doctrine known as The Duty of Care 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. Pre-teens often develop the physical strength and coordination to row before they have the experience or judgment of older rowers. And many teens have the physical abilities of adults while on-going research continues to examine the increased risk-taking common during these developmental years. Rowing coaches should be aware of this.
Cold water is known to be dangerous; rowers in racing shells do have accidents and life-jackets and PFDs 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, field houses, or school pools — where regulations require minimum water temperatures in the 70s and lifeguards always on duty — and they are always subject to sudden changes in the weather. Water temperatures below 50f/10c are universally recognized as extremely dangerous and potentially life-threatening. This creates 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 is potentially 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.”
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