Harvard Halts House Crew, Recreational Sculling After Longtime Director Retires

Harvard did not hold House crew last spring and has put its recreational sculling program on hold, leaving the future of intramural rowing uncertain after the longtime director of both programs retired last fall.

Dan J. Boyne, who ran House crew and directed recreational sculling for roughly four decades, said in an interview that no one has been hired to replace him. Recreational sculling had allowed undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and staff to row on the Charles River.

“We are aware of the status of the recreational rowing program and are currently evaluating the program to determine its future,” Assistant Athletics Director Alex Carras wrote in a statement. “As soon as we have more information, we will share it with the community.”

Harvard Athletics has not announced when, or whether, either program will resume.

The pause caps years of decline for what was once among the largest intramural programs at the College, Boyne said. Boyne said House crew struggled to rebuild after a pandemic-era hiatus and a 2023 renovation that evicted the program from its former home in Weld Boathouse, moving its boats to outdoor racks across the river.

“The priority was clearly on satisfying the top of the pyramid, which is varsity programs, and then fitting in anybody else,” Boyne said.

Before the pandemic, 300 to 400 undergraduates and House tutors rowed for their Houses each spring, according to Boyne.

“My former boss at the time — his name was John Wenzel — described it as the crown jewel of the intramural program,” Boyne said.

Intramural rowing returned in spring 2025, but with tighter restrictions and lower participation. Recreational sculling hours, which once ran from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m., were cut roughly to 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. — a window that conflicts with many students’ classes.

“It was regrowing nowhere near the numbers that we had before,” Boyne said. “It was a bad time slot, and we lost a lot of institutional knowledge that’s passed from the seniors and juniors to the sophomores and freshmen.”

“It really takes a lot more effort to start something from scratch when you break the continuity loop,” Boyne added.

Boyne traced many of the changes to the Weld Boathouse renovation, saying locker space once used by recreational rowers was reduced and then eliminated.

Boyne said he and the other coaches had less say in planning the renovation than he would have liked.

“I personally felt blindsided by things that were being planned that I had not been included on or consulted on,” he said.

Boyne said the renovation coincided with a push for gender equity in Harvard’s growing facilities. Radcliffe crew, the women’s varsity program, is based at Weld, while the men’s varsity programs row from Newell.

“I think that women should have a space of their own,” Boyne said. “They deserve all the resources that the men have.”

But he said Athletics did not plan for the programs it displaced.

George Walker Weld built the boathouse in 1906 to encourage “university-wide rowing,” according to the College’s website, which still lists Weld as home to recreational sculling and House intramural programs.

Weld was once shared by House crew, recreational sculling, and Radcliffe crew, with each program rowing in a different time slot, Patricia Greenfield ’62, who rowed out of Weld, wrote. She criticized the renovation for replacing one of the boathouse’s bays with rowing machines, calling it “wasteful of precious space intended to be used for boats.”

“House crew not only needs to be restored,” she wrote, “it needs to be restored in the Weld Boathouse.”

—Staff writer Julia A. Karabolli can be reached at [email protected].