Fifteen-year-old Andrew Robinson, who lives in Clifton Park, New York, first became involved in competitive rowing about three years ago, when one of his good friends, who was trying to start a homeschool rowing team, introduced him to the sport. Andrew joined the team and has remained active in it ever since, seeing it grow in size from eight to nearly thirty people.

Andrew competes in gold standard, an event won by the individual who completes the race fastest, and in quad sculling, where two boats rowed by four people each compete against each other. Andrew has participated in numerous regattas, including the Head and the Tail of the Fish, the Stotesbury Cup, the Canadian Royal Henly, and the National Team Trials.

About a month ago Andrew began training for the spring rowing season. Thus far, that has primarily mainly consisted of intensive workouts on land. He dryly noted, “If you ask any rower they would either call it dryland [training] or the coach’s attempt to kill you.”

Andrew added, “The highlight of my rowing career, surprisingly, is actually from my first season at Stotesbury Cup, even though we [lost badly]. At that [time] the crew was so small that the rowers had all become incredibly tightly knit and were all almost like a family at that point…It was one of the best weekends of my life...The other highlight is when me and my best friend rowed an undefeated fall season, winning all of our races by over a minute and most of them [by] over two minutes.”

Despite his heavy involvement in rowing, Andrew also finds the time to climb competitively. Every winter he competes in a local climbing league and also climbs in one or two American Bouldering Series competitions. Next year he plans on climbing in a national league which would allow him to travel around the country on weekends and participate in competitions. In the past Andrew used to also run track and swim competitively as well.

Andrew looks up to Lynn Hill, one of the top climbers during the 1980s. He said, “She is my hero…it would be hard to explain why I look up to her, but she kind of summed up the love of climbing for me. She said something along the lines of, ‘A real climber climbs because when he is on a rock face all the pains and pleasures of life disappear and you know you know what needs to done and how to do it, and you feel free. It is just you and the rock.’”

In the future Andrew dreams of eventually competing at the Olympics. For the moment he has set his sights on making the Junior National Team and attending the Junior World Row Championship in his senior year. He hopes to eventually get a scholarship for college for his involvement in rowing.