Announcing the 2023 Empacher-IRCA Scholar Athletes

The Intercollegiate Rowing Coaches Association is excited to announce our 2023 Empacher-IRCA Scholar Athletes. We are proud to offer our congratulations to these rowers and coxswains who have demonstrated what it truly means to be a “student-athlete”.

As previously announced this past fall, the IRCA welcomed Empacher Bootswerft as our official awards sponsor and we’re grateful for their partnership in recognizing the following athletes.

In order to be named a “scholar athlete,” rowers and coxswains must have met the following criteria:

• Athletes from all IRCA Member Schools are eligible
• Athletes must be in their second year or more of eligibility
• Athletes must have competed in their program’s top 3 boats during the current season or raced at the 2022 IRA Championship.
• Athletes must have, at least, a 3.50 cumulative GPA through fall semester.

With another year behind us, below are some numbers that further highlight these achievements.

• There were 638 rowers and coxswains who met the criteria set by our Awards & Polling Committee (detailed above), a 22% increase over last year’s 525 honorees. They represent 64 teams (55 heavyweight and 9 lightweight) from the 55 member programs.
• The average GPA was a 3.75 and for the third year in a row, the highest GPA was held by Oliver Diamond ‘23 of Wesleyan University with a 4.2.
• The highest number of scholar athletes from a single team came from the Georgetown University lightweights with 26, followed by the Harvard University heavyweights with 21. The highest number from one program came from Harvard University with 41 combined scholar-athletes from their heavyweight and lightweight teams, followed by Georgetown University with 35, Dartmouth College with 34, Yale University with 33, and MIT with 32.

The full list can be seen in the spreadsheet below, which you can also view here or view/download as a Google Sheet here.