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The Knecht Cup Regatta returns to Camden, New Jersey’s Cooper River race course Aprill 11-12 with new trophies and expended events, including Para rowing for the first time.
Last year’s regatta drew over 650 crews, making it one of the largest college regattas in the world, second only to the American Collegiate Rowing Association’s club national championship regatta.
Boston University’s lightweights won the Ann Harris Smith Memorial Trophy for varsity eights in 2025, ahead of MIT and Drexel. Eventual men’s Division III national champions Trinity won the William J. Knecht Memorial Trophy for men’s varsity.
In addition to the traditional eights, the Knecht Cup Regatta features less common collegiate events, including singles, doubles, quads, and coxed quads.
“Without regattas like the Knecht Cup we’d have very little competition,” says Dominican University coach Ivan Rudolph-Shabinsky. Dominican, a small—about 1,000 undergrads and a few hundred graduate students—school located about 15 miles north of New York city serving primarily minority ethnicity students who are the first in their families to attend college, has a Division II rowing program that runs on a $25,000 budget and competes mostly in sculling events. All of the rowers are on some form of scholarship so that they can attend college.
“We’re a little bit different than the colleges that have historically had rowing,” says Rudolph-Shabinsky, who is a professor at Domincan, started the rowing program, and also runs Rockland Rowing as the president of the board.
The Knecht Cup Regatta also attracts better-known rowing programs from across the country, including Wisconsin, the University of Connecticut, Fordham University, Georgetown, Boston University, and Radcliffe.
This year’s regatta adds newly named trophies will recognize the legacy and impact of Albert P. Wachlin, Lois Trench-Hines, Mark Valenti, and Ann and Marie Jonik.
“Al represents the very spirit of what my father built on the Cooper River,” said Laura Knecht Blanche, regatta director and daughter of Bill Knecht, of Wachlin. “He worked beside my dad from the beginning, and he has carried that standard of excellence forward for decades. Naming this trophy in his honor is our way of recognizing the man who makes every lane fair and every race possible.”
“My goal,” Wachlin says, “is to make things better and more fair for competitors by installing the best starting platform, stakeboat and buoy system available.”
That commitment to fairness is precisely why the Knecht Cup Regatta is honoring him.
