Sparks George Washington

Camp purchases are fully refundable minus transaction fees until March 1 for summer camps.

• We strongly recommend you purchase travel protection with cancel for any reason coverage.
  • We offer these plans from Travel Insured International during the check-out process for our four and five day camps and during final balance payment for deposit-based multi-week camps.
  • Learn more about travel protection here
    
    
• If you withdraw after the above dates, there are no refunds for any reason whatsoever (including, but not limited to: voluntary withdraw, illness or injury, summer school, security concerns or other reasons).
  
  
• If your camper leaves camp after it starts, there are no refunds for any reason whatsoever, including but not limited to: voluntary withdrawal, illness or injury, dismissal by Sparks (due to discipline, behavior, lack of fitness or motivation, etc.) security concerns, or any other reason. Any costs incurred by Sparks as a result of an early departure are the sole responsibility of the parents.
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• In the unlikely case a camp does not proceed, we'll work to notify you by March 1. You'll be offered a different program or a refund. In some cases, we may extend the 'go, no-go' date. We recommend buying your flight after March 1 or later, if we advise.

We offer discounted prices for "early bird" registrations prior to January 31.

Regarding Scholarships:

Please see this link to our NCAA Compliance webpage.

Our collegiate introductory camps support the widest range of camper experience levels - from folks starting the sport to active Division I recruits. That said, camper experience averages at about one year (2 seasons) of competitive rowing experience.

If you've never rowed or coxed before, we provide ten Learn To Row slots per camp session for students who possess athletic backgrounds, focus, and the comfort to engage intensively with their own staff and schedule.

For experienced athletes: we require coxswains to have one season of experience or more and offer twelve slots with a dedicated coach and curriculum. We ask both experienced men and women to have one season of experience or more and typically average three experienced eights per gender.

Once you get to camp, you'll be put through an assessment the first day to place you with a group that will work best for you - so don't worry about whether you're good enough (or potentially, "too good" ;) ) for camp.

Please feel free to read in detail about our coxswain curriculum here.

We are the only camp in rowing with a full-time staff that has academic and professional backgrounds in experiential education. We also have a summer operations staff (many are returners that teach during the school year) who buy into the idea of personal growth at camp not just for campers - but for themselves as well.

The result is a culture sincerely committed to the power of rowing as a personally transformative experience built on vulnerability, thoughtfulness, responsibility, and initiative.

This does not mean other camps are relatively inferior; in fact, we feel such a perspective is not helpful. The camp needs to fit the athlete. Our focus is on utilizing rowing to create self-awareness for our camp community

The objective at our introductory collegiate camps is to educate and inspire, so we suggest seeking fit for your goal set. The difference is in the coaching staff and location. We advise using the camp to get inspired insofar as collegiate environments, and as such it would be best to choose one that might be on your school list at some point. Different venues may also feature different attractions from a rowing perspective. Beyond that, coaching staffs differ per camp and some students seek to connect with particular coaches.

At Sparks, home school coaches are given first priority for slots followed by partner school coaches from our network of collegiate camps - this results in a mix of coaches from these schools. (If you have a question about a particular coach, click the intercom button in the bottom right corner and ask us!)

We fill any remaining slots with the highest level of coaching talent available worldwide. This has generally been coaches from Holland and England, Olympic medalists, collegiate educators of solid repute, and one five time Olympic coach.

We take the quality of our educational staff extremely seriously at Sparks. We do not value being an Olympian or a Division I coach in itself but instead seek to hire coaches who are first talented educationally and second passionate about the sport. If you throw in Olympic experience on top of that, then that helps too!

We reserve a very small grouping of slots at each camp for the learn to row/cox section.

The group receives its own dedicated coach for the week and is oriented to the sport we love.

Ideal Learn To Row/Cox athletes have prior athletic background, and will be taken where they are and taught from the ground up.

How does Learn to Cox work?

You should sign up as a coxswain with zero seasons of experience and then be oriented to the fundamentals of the sport with the Learn to Row group while you will also attend meetings of the coxswain section at camp. You will also have access to the camp coxswain coach beyond of your dedicated learn to row/cox coach.

Per NCAA rules, recruiting or speaking in specifics about institutional recruiting policies is not a part of camp. Campers may speak about the overall process and ask coaches' opinions on specific steps of their journey (i.e. 2K development), but may not inquire as to their possibilities at the coaches' programs during camp.

Coaches all have their own style of pedagogy. Part of camp should be to experience the differences in those styles such that campers may better understand the way coaching staff manage and connect with the sport for their own benefit. Campers will have the chance to speak with coaches per their recruiting questions multiple times during camp.

We employ safety and risk management practices from the adventure education industry, where some risk is inherent but must be quantified insofar as educational value. These practices are initially employed in program design and we work hard to train operations staff to seek to maintain an awareness of specific risks at all times. No outdoors programming can guarantee safety, however professional management of risk is key to the art of providing consistently excellent experiential education programming.

Please also see our essential eligibility criteria here.  

Registration is 1 PM - 2 PM on the first day of camp

Camp ends at 1 PM on the last day of camp

Times for Day Campers generally run from 8 AM to 8 PM

More specific information is available in the FAQ for Registered Campers on the camper forms dashboard - though we're always available in the lower right hand corner for questions.

You will fill out a travel form after registration that enables our staff to make sure your camper arrives and departs camp safely.

We will have a Sparks staff member at National Airport (DCA) and Washington Union Station on the first and last day of camp. We do not rent vehicles for staff to transport campers in Washington, DC. Campers will be placed together in an Uber to and from camp.

Flights should arrive no later than 12 PM on the first day of camp and depart no earlier than 3 PM on the last day.

Unfortunately, we cannot support unaccompanied minor travel at this camp. Please contact us and we are happy to work with you to find alternative options. Southwest Airlines does not require UM status for 14 year olds and serves the local airports.

Camp forms are issued at least six weeks prior to camp on our site via your dashboard.

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Certainly!

If you have an logistical or informational question, feel free to use the live chat in the bottom right corner. We can generally turn these around quickly.

If you want to speak with a real, live human - that's also possible! We just ask you schedule a call with us (click here) given we're a very small office.

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