St. Augustine's University Ushers In First HBCU Women's Rowing Team

St. Augustine’s University (SAU), a private college in North Carolina, recently announced launching a women’s rowing team. This is notably the first program of its kind at a historically Black college or university (HBCU).

The program has been in the works since last summer, and it’s been registered with the American Collegiate Rowing Association (ACRA).

“ACRA is proud to do whatever we can to support our sport’s growth and encourage SAU and other HBCUs to join our organization,” ACRA President Cam Brown said.

The team is currently slated to begin competing in live water beginning this fall. While the team currently has 5 athletes, they hope to grow to 10 in the near future.

“We’re just eager to get on the water already,” SAU rowing team member Mikahya Hill said. “We want to get things going and get more dedicated people on the team who want to make a name for ourselves.”

While SAU’s new program will be the only active HBCU women’s rowing team, Howard University has some history with the sport.

The university sponsored a team back in the 1960s, and it rose to prominence in the following years. However, Howard’s rowing program appears to be out of commission presently.

“We started looking into Howard and what they had going on and put us on a little assignment,” Hill recalled. “We didn’t find anything: Just Howard, and that was about as far as rowing at HBCUs went.”

SAU’s women’s rowing team is the latest groundbreaking HBCU sports program.

As Blavity previously reported, Fisk University announced a women’s gymnastics program earlier this year—the first of its kind among HBCUs.

These developments also come as athletes all over the country get to benefit from the NCAA’s new stance on Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals. The association announced that student-athletes would be able to begin profiting off of such agreements, thus changing the financial game for young sports stars.