[cmrnpizzo14]

Woo! My time to shine!

About me: I am currently a division one rower at a highly competitive university (top 10 in the US), studying mechanical engineering and computer science. I rowed all through high school while being on my school's FRC team. I was founding member of the FRC team, eventual captain and would like to consider myself one of the most dedicated people we had. I was also the captain of my rowing team.

I'll use a couple different standards of comparison here, I'll try my best to compare these without too much bias either way!

TIME:

Personally, my rowing team took more time in high school. I know that our FRC team did not meet as much as other teams. We only met Tuesday/Thursday for 3 hours each and then Saturday 9-5. Obviously during the end of the season it stepped up and we met more but generally my rowing team would practice 2.5 hours a day for 6 days a week.
Additionally, rowing was in season during the fall and the spring with offseason training in the winter while FRC only had regular meetings during winter and throughout our competition season.

EFFORT:

This one is pretty equivalent. I would say that rowing is much much more physically demanding while it requires very little mentally. Obviously robotics is the exact opposite here. I think that designing a system for the bot versus training towards a goal time isn't a very fair comparison here. One is a very long term goal that requires months of effort while another is a very short term but pretty stressful process. This one I can't confidently compare.

ATMOSPHERE:

To clarify here, this is just how the team feels. This one is definitely different. I think that both teams are close. I had best friends on both of my teams in high school. I would have to say that my rowing team as a whole might have been a little bit closer but that would just have come from spending more time together. Additionally, the sports team bond is actually kind of close to what is depicted in movies. You all share in the misery of training and losing and the euphoria of winning. At times this feels stronger than that on an FRC team because training is putting yourself through quite a bit of physical pain where as the design process is (in my opinion) still pretty fun regardless of the outcome! I think that I would have to sum up my relationship with my FRC teammates as being slightly more on the professional side where as I might have actually been closer with my rowing friends.

Summary: I would say about equal in all things except time! This will vary team to team but in my experience my sport took more time.


I'll post more later but I have finals to study for!! Please reply with specific questions if you have them!