Intercollegiate Rowing Association

The IRA was founded by Cornell, Columbia, and Penn in 1891 and its first annual regatta was hosted on June 24, 1895. Today, Navy and Syracuse are also part of the association. Each year these five schools choose whom to invite to the IRA National Championship Regatta and are responsible for its organization.

The IRA runs the IRA National Championship Regatta, which since 1895 has been considered to be the United States collegiate national championship of men's rowing. This regatta today includes both men's and women's (lightweight) events for 8- and 4-oared sweep boats with coxswains and a women's lightweight double scull (two-oars for each rower) event.

The IRA National Championship is the oldest college rowing championship in the United States.

History

Columbia, Cornell and Pennsylvania were the organizing stewards of the Poughkeepsie Regatta, the IRA Championship until 1949. The first edition was held on the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, New York, on June 24, 1895.

The format through 1967 with the exception of 1964 was to line all the entries in the race onto stake-boats and fire a shotgun for the start. In the last race of this format in 1967 on Onondaga Lake, in Syracuse, New York, 16 varsity crews waited for the gun to begin their three-mile race—winner take all.

The format was changed in the Olympic year, 1968, to heats and finals over a 2,000-meter, six-lane course. This heat-rep-final, six-lane, 2,000 meter format continues today.

Since the 1920s, when the West Coast crews—notably California and Washington—began to attend and regularly win, the Intercollegiate Rowing Association's championship (known as the IRA) has been considered the national championship for collegiate rowing. Two important crews, Harvard and Yale, however, did not participate in the heavyweight divisions of the event for a lengthy period. (After losing to Cornell in 1897, Harvard and Yale chose to avoid the IRA, so as not to diminish the Harvard–Yale Regatta. The IRA championship was held each year preceding that regatta, which Harvard and Yale considered more important to their schools and alumni than the IRA event. It soon became part of each school's tradition not to participate.) Beginning in 1973, Washington decided to skip the IRA because a change in schedule conflicted with its finals. Washington, however, returned to the regatta in 1995.

From 1982 to 1996, another event, the Cincinnati Regatta (which renamed itself the National Collegiate Rowing Championship), was held in Cincinnati with funding from a benefactor. It was viewed by some crews as an additional, quasi-championship, as the field included Harvard and Yale, as well as medalists from the IRA regatta, Pac-10 and Eastern Sprints. In 2003, after an absence of over one hundred years, Harvard and Yale decided to participate in the IRA championship.

Before 2006, some competitive club rowing programs, which receive little or no funding from their university athletic departments, were invited to the IRA Championship. In 2006, Rutgers University cut funding from its men's rowing program, reducing it to "club" status. Part of Rutger's justification for cutting rowing was that clubs could compete equally with funded programs at the IRA Championships. To avoid other members from losing funding, the IRA excluded clubs from competing at its championship beginning in 2007, leading to the creation of the American Collegiate Rowing Association for clubs.

The IRA regatta was cancelled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.