The first intercollegiate athletic competition took place between Harvard and Yale crews on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire in 1852. The sport quickly spread westward, and in 1870, the Wesern Rowing Club became the first of nine rowing organizations to be founded in the St. Louis area. Only seven years later, in 1877, the St. Louis Rowing Club (SLRC) was founded. The sport captivated the region, and the 1904 Olympic rowing competition took place on Creve Coeur Lake. Twenty St. Louis rowers earned gold medals that year.
Interest in the sport of rowing fluctuated and ebbed throughout the years, making SLRC the only remaining rowing club in the region. It's financially supported in large part by the St. Louis Rowing Foundation, which was founded in 1990 by Yale oarsman Karl Heilman.
In 1985, Andy Laine, then a graduate student at Washington University (WU), informally started Washington University Crew with Heilman's support. The team would share SLRC's facilities: an unused volunteer fire station in Creve Coeur Park generously given by the St. Louis County Parks and Recreation Department.
The team signed coaches the following year: Ahsan Iqbal became the head coach, and was assisted by women's coach Matthew Ellinwood. Iqbal was also a WU graduate student at the time, but his credentials boasted experience with MIT crew as well as head coaching experience with SLRC.
In 1987, the team entered and lost its first competitive race against a more experienced Kansas University Crew in Lawrence, KS. The team saw this as a clarion call to action, and trained itself to its first competitive medal in the Great Plains Rowing Championship in Topeka, KS. A novice men's lightweight four, including the club's first president, Alan Kaplan, brought home the gold.
SLRC and WU Crew each hosted their first regattas in this year. The Gateway Regatta and the Washington University Crew Classic, respectively. In the latter regatta, the WU Crew Athletes demonstrated their dedication and intensity in an impressive victory over the same Kansas Crew that had defeated them earlier that year.
The 1986-1987 season saw the realization of the University Athletic Association (UAA), as well as its recognition by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. A more detailed history of the UAA may be found here.
The team boomed in the next two years, and a full-time coach was hired. Matthew Deifenbach left the Vesper Boat Club to coach the team to its first Dad Vail gold. Deifenbach later left the team to become an Olympic coach in 1992, and current head coach Cameron Carter joined the team in 1995.
Throughout this rotation of coaching staff, the team still shared its boathouse with SLRC. Until spring floods destroyed the boathouse alate in 1993 and damaged much of the SLRC and WU Crew's equipment and racing shells. Following this unfortunate disaster, both clubs relocated to a temporary boat-pen compound on the northern edge of Creve Coeur Lake while members of both clubs fundraised for a new boathouse. The bulk of the money for the new boathouse was donated by the parent of a Washington University rower. Washington University financed the boathouse construction while St. Louis Rowing Club accumulated and organized their funds to pay for their share of the facilities, which they accomplished in 2007 .Construction of this boathouse began in the summer of 2003 and was completed in early 2004. Today, the shared facility houses WU Crew, Saint Louis University's Billiken Rowing Club, and SLRC juniors and masters programs. Meanwhile, Washington University is larger and more competetive than it's ever been with aspirations of continued greatness for years to come.