NACRO Challenges USRowing’s Control of Regattas

At the Sarasota 2K regatta in late March, the referees were not wearing the standard light-blue tops, navy-blue blazers, and emblems of USRowing. All were USRowing referees but they were wearing navy-blue polo shirts with the acronym NACRO on the left side of the chest.

That’s because the regatta at Nathan Benderson Park included teams racing under the umbrella of the Intercollegiate Rowing Association, which has sought another source of officials and insurance coverage.

The National Association of Collegiate Rowing Officials is one such alternative, and the Sarasota regatta that drew IRA and other college teams was the first significant event where its acronym appeared.

The organization, founded in January by IRA Commissioner Laura Kunkemueller and two other NACRO board members, has no employees and no website but it has a powerful ally, the 32,000-member National Association of Sports Officials.

The nonprofit NASO, founded in 1980, provides insurance coverage and other benefits for members who officiate many sports in the U.S. and Canada. NASO’s managers are the staff of Referee Enterprises Inc., the for-profit company that publishes Referee magazine.

NACRO uses a company called RQ+ to assign referees to regattas, track their schedules, and perform other clerical functions, Kunkemueller said. RQ+ is used by most NCAA athletic programs.

Kunkemueller, a USRowing and World Rowing referee and one of the few people who has worked at the last 25 IRA championships – first as a referee and since 2015 as chief referee—is a past USRowing board member who rowed for Princeton.

Since NACRO requires all its referees to be USRowing officials, what’s the point?

Kunkemueller’s answer: NACRO allows colleges to have trained, high-quality officiating and the insurance coverage necessary to run regattas while avoiding USRowing requirements—notably, that they abide by U.S. Center for SafeSport rules, that regatta-sponsoring groups be organizational members of USRowing, that all athletes in a regatta be individual members, and that all coaches are USRowing-certified.

NACRO does require members to complete abuse-prevention training (SafeSport is acceptable) and a background check, she said.

USRowing requirements might work well at events for masters, juniors, and smaller collegiate programs, Kunkemueller said, but larger more established college programs have their own staffs and procedures to ensure safe, high-quality athletic experiences.

“Having to do both bogs down the works,” she said. “What colleges object to is outside organizations telling them how to deal with their employees.”

Kunkemueller said a decision by the IRA stewards led her to form NACRO. The decision was made in October, the same month she was named commissioner.

That decision, according to a memo to coaches Kunkemueller wrote at the time and that’s posted on the IRA website, says, “USRowing organizational membership is NOT required for an IRA member school to participate in IRA-run regattas.”

But that doesn’t mean the IRA or NACRO are “pulling people away from USRowing,” Kunkemueller contended.

“This is a parallel enterprise that serves a segment that USRowing has chosen to exclude,” she said, by imposing requirements the schools don’t want to fulfill.

NACRO’s emergence, however, has put USRowing referees in an uncomfortable position, said Letcher Ross, chairman of USRowing’s Referee Committee.

“It’s unfortunate that we find ourselves caught between these factions that haven’t been able to find common ground without it coming to this,” said Ross, a referee for nearly 30 years.

“We are all committed to being USRowing referees because that is our sanctioning body. I don’t see that changing,” he said, pointing out that NACRO depends on the training and vetting that USRowing provides its officials.

He said he’s satisfied with USRowing’s insurance, which includes explicit coverage for such things as liability for errors and omissions in officiating.

NACRO “adds to my overhead,” he said, because it is “another organizational task you have to deal with” to officiate for some collegiate regattas.

Regardless of how NACRO grows or how many refs join so they can serve the sport and its athletes at some regattas, USRowing isn’t going anywhere, and referees who join NACRO will remain USRowing referees, Ross said.

USRowing membership is mandatory for teams competing in international regattas, such as England’s prestigious Henley Royal Regatta. That’s because World Rowing requires teams that compete in its events be in good standing with their national governing bodies. Being the sports’ NGB also means USRowing is responsible for choosing and developing the U.S. National Team that competes in world championships, the Pan American Games, Olympic Games, and Paralympic Games—goals to which many top American college rowers aspire. As the NGB, USRowing also is subject to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s rules and requirements, including SafeSport.

USRowing was created in 1982 by the merger of the National Association of Amateur Oarsmen, founded in 1872, and the National Women’s Rowing Association, established in 1963.