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No one has been involved more directly with the growth of rowing in Florida and the evolution of USRowing National Team development schemes in the 21st century than Casey Galvanek.

The Sarasota Crew CEO, president, and head coach has worn many hats and held numerous titles in his 20 plus years of coaching on every level, from learn-to-row to his current side hustle of selecting and preparing the U.S. men’s Olympic eight, while also leading one of the largest and most successful rowing clubs in America.

Rowing News: What’s it been like going from meeting a local need with Sarasota Crew in 2002, and winning that first state championship in a four, to becoming one of the largest and most successful rowing programs in the country in just 20 years?

Galvanek: When I came on board, there was a strong group of parents and a head coach, Tom Tiffany, who felt the need to expand opportunities for the families in Sarasota. When I arrived, they’d already been successful, but I decided, “Hey, we need to communicate individual athletes’ needs more than a lot of team needs.”
And so we took that individual-athlete approach and expanded upon it. A lot of people were willing to try it, and it helped expand outreach into the community. The turning point was when a parent said, “If you’re looking for a program that’s looking out for the best interest of your child, then what Sarasota Crew is offering is the thing to do.” When I heard that, I thought, “Man, we’re really doing something special.”

Year after year, we grew and grew. At one point before Covid, we had 400 middle-school and high-school athletes. And then we added elementary schools and masters. So we have a big spread of age groups and approaches we need to tend to properly.

While that’s a difficult task, the approach of individual improvement has been the thing, and it’s been exciting to be part of it. We’ve had some great assistant coaches come through. People have taken the reins at our program and made it incredibly successful and then gone on to other programs and helped them be successful. So we’ve been lucky. We have great families, great kids, and great people who want to be part of it and help those kids and families.

Rowing News: Florida’s Sarasota County has gone from having small regattas on a flooded borrow pit to the best regatta course in the world at Nathan Benderson Park, at which Sarasota Crew now manages programs. What has it been like to be part of the development of the national home for our sport?

Galvanek: It’s been incredible. Nathan Benderson Park has turned into something far beyond the original prospects and ideas. Randy Benderson, well, Nathan Benderson at first, but Randy Benderson now, really pushed it, and the county was very supportive.
There’s been an incredible partnership with what is now the Nathan Benderson Park Conservancy, Benderson Development, and the county. They’ve cut through the red tape and said, “Hey, look, this would be best.”

If the county couldn’t provide it, Benderson would provide what was needed, and the county would provide their share, whether organizationally or bureaucratically or financially. It’s worked out really well, and they’ve all been very supportive. We [Sarasota Crew] currently have three locations, and it’s been incredible to see behind the scenes just how much they want to be involved in helping the community.

Portions of our programming will now be centered at the park. Our outreach program will be at the park instead of our Osprey location, which cuts down on travel by over half and is an example of something that will benefit the community.

We have years of running a program. They have years of helping the community. Every time we say, “Hey, do you know if we could do this for the community?” they say, “OK, great, show us how you’re going to do it. We’ll support you.” It’s exciting to work with a group of people who are ready and willing to charge forward.

Rowing News: A great thing about rowing, and one of USRowing’s greatest accomplishments, is that we have a recognized unified national championship for youth rowing, which seems to be making a permanent home in Sarasota. How did that happen?

Galvanek: The unified nature of Youth Nationals now is terrific. When Chris Chase created an additional national championship in Saratoga for rowers under 15 and 17, there were two separate youth championship regattas. As part of his effort to grow rowing, he worked with USRowing to create a more nationally recognized event.

When the regatta was handed over to USRowing, with its tremendous outreach, it grew pretty large. For one year, it was in New Jersey as a separate event. When USRowing asked rowing programs, “What would help you attend?” they said, “Bringing it together as one event.”

Yes, there have been hiccups, but now it’s an incredibly large regatta that has huge attendance, from 13-year-olds to 20-year-olds. There’s an energy I’ve never seen before at a regatta. It’s exciting for our kids, especially the young kids, to hang around and watch the older kids race, and it’s an awesome experience for the athletes from top to bottom.
They’ve done a terrific job of making sure that things run smoothly. They make corrections when they can fix them or figure out how to make things better. It really has helped us grow again after Covid. I hope other programs around the country are realizing the same thing and that more of their members and participants are able to attend.
Rich [Cacioppo, USRowing’s executive director] has done a good job of making sure people are paying attention to the details and trying to make things better. It’s definitely appreciated.

Rowing News: How has National Team development in America changed in the 21st century?

Galvanek: In the time I’ve been involved, we’ve seen a broad spectrum of approaches, beginning with tying it into more than just the erg, such as talking about development on the local level and reaching out to local coaches about what’s expected and what USRowing is looking for in terms of athlete participation.

A big step was creating the Olympic Development Program, which was really a U17 program before it became ODP, and now the Pathways program expands on that. Pathways was established to make sure coaches were using the same language, so athletes would understand the expectations and also so coaches would understand what we’re looking for.
The road has been rocky, and not everybody has bought in, but Josy [Verdonkschot, USRowing’s chief of high performance] has expanded the program, and Brett Gorman of Pathways is spreading the word about ways people can get involved. The effort has grown, especially over the past four years when Chris [Chase] was in charge of making sure the membership understood the opportunities and his department improved communication with athletes and their parents.

A big part of the process is letting people know they have opportunities and making the process so clear and defined that people understand it. It’s exciting to see a broader spectrum of people getting involved or get people involved who didn’t think they could be involved before. That’s how USRowing has spent most of its energy—making sure they’re reaching people who may not have known they could do things, that there’s opportunity.

Rowing News: So what don’t people—coaches, parents, old rowers—know or get about 21st-century elite rowing?

Galvanek: Twenty-first century rowing is about long-term investment. The key is athletic maturity and how developed you are as a rower. It’s not your energy level or your expectations. It’s where you are currently.

You can be an all-star junior athlete, but just because you’re amazing already does not mean that in two years you’re going to be an Olympic athlete. If you’re an amazing youth athlete, that’s a great start, but sometimes it still means you’re eight years out from the Olympics.

With social media and access to so much information, people assume they can jump the line. But the 21st century is about patience and going back to true development.