By Barley Lewis-McCabe
“We had won a national championship my freshman year and it felt like nobody really knew about it I guess, everyone was like, ‘oh, rowing’s a thing?” senior rower Ellie Walters said.
Members of Humboldt’s highly decorated women’s rowing team have felt frustrated with how the Cal Poly Humboldt Athletics department advertises the rowing team, compared to some of the other sports.
Senior coxswain Giania Bogacki felt the rowing team received an unexpected drop in attention after the initial hype of their National Collegiate Athletic Association championship in 2023 slowed down compared to other teams.
“I see a lot more promotion for some of the other teams who maybe haven’t won titles like we have,” Bogacki said. “They’re all doing great work — I think a lot of our teams have improved over the past years in how far they’re getting in their conferences. [Women’s rowing isn’t] seeing that same sort of promotion as we’re making those same accomplishments, if not going even further.”
A few team members got access to women’s rowing Instagram and began posting about their games themselves since the account hadn’t been actively advertising games or promoting the team as much as they’d like.
“I think maybe some of it has to do that we’re like a women’s team, and so we don’t get as much attention as some of the other teams. But I think the major component is the lack of understanding and familiarity with rowing from this region,” said Bogacki.
Rowers on the team also had to create some of the promotional materials themselves, “[Members of the team would] create a race day boat line up or a roster and they’ll have the accurate names posted,” former coxswain and 2025 CPH graduate Emily Daniels said. “The students have to do a lot more stuff and even when they are trying to do things to get the word out for the time, it just doesn’t get used.”
“We’re constantly working to improve what we do to support our athletes as best we can given the resources that we have,” said Deputy Athletics Director and 2012 rowing team captain Amanda Nelson. “Athletics is an ever changing environment, obviously, which has different pressures and we have an extremely limited staff… we’re always looking for feedback from our student athletes and ways that we can improve.”
In the past, the athletics department has shuttled people from campus to the Eureka waterfront for the open boathouse event. Daniels suggested the university could start shuttling people to the waterfront for home races, as well.
“[The Athletics department does] do so much so it’s the little things and the nitty-gritty that we see and take away from it. It feels to us and the team like we’re not asking for that much more, we’re just asking for the same thing,” Daniels said. “If the track team gets posts consistently about their races, with their names spelled correctly, then we should get the same.”
Barley is the opinionated opinion editor and an untraditional reporter who focuses on social change and stories with a real human impact. If you’d like to reach him for whatever reason email bl258@humboldt.edu.