Our Youth Rowing Programme provides weekly rowing sessions for pupils from schools across the North West. We work with over 40 state schools across six sites in Warrington, Runcorn, Northwich, Salford, Merseyside and North Staffs. 

Each participating school brings a group of 10 pupils to weekly sessions throughout the whole academic year. Each session lasts two hours. The sessions include learning how to row on a rowing machine, fitness training in the gym, and rowing on the water is rowing boats. Intertwined with all of this, our pupils learn essential life skills that will help them in their lives way from the rowing clubs.

Within the programme, we also incorporate three key events:

Each year, we run an Indoor Rowing Championships. Our last event welcomed over 400 pupils from 32 schools across the North West! It runs throughout the day for Year 8 and Year 9 pupils. There are individual races where the young people race for 3 or 4 minutes, depending on their age, and then relay races where teams of four race for 8 minutes.

This is one of the cornerstones of our programme giving young people the opportunity to compete at a regional event. Having worked with their coaches at their weekly sessions, this is when they can put all their training into action. It’s the first time many of them will have represented their school in a sporting event of this size. It’s very exciting for them and a great experience. Rowing by its nature is the epitome of teamwork and it’s wonderful to see the young people work together to get a real sense of achievement.

These events rely on over 50 volunteers which are made up of All Aboard Youth Rowing coaches, British Rowing representatives and lots of friends and supporters of the programme.

The top performing athletes from this event also qualify to enter into NJIRC (National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships) which takes place in early Spring

The National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships (NJIRC) take place in London (at the Copper Box Arena in London’s Olympic Park) and Leeds each year, attracting over 2000 young people from all across the UK. We give the opportunity to attend this event to the top performing athletes at our own Indoor Rowing Championships. It’s a wonderful experience for all who attend and involves travelling together on the train (the first time for many of our students!), competing at a national level, and ending with a McDonald’s tea! All this is quite a feat of organisation to feed that many hungry young athletes in time to catch the train home!

This is the pinnacle of our year when all the schools come to our original site at Warrington Rowing Club to compete in side by side racing on the River Mersey in our Summer Schools Regatta! The course a 300 metre stretch of the rowing club’s regatta course and it’s officiated by qualifies British Rowing umpires giving the young people a real taste of competition. We encourage teachers, families and friends to come along to support providing a brilliant atmosphere and experience for our students.