Thames Racing Challenge

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.
  
  
• 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.

Average age is 16 with 1.5 years in the sport. That said, the experience of 1.5 years can vary significantly depending on team and region. We evaluate each athlete on a case by case basis in the admissions process.

It is helpful sometimes to consider what can be accomplished at camp in the timespan to decide whether one's level of experience is a fit for the program. England is an intermediate camp that fits between our shorter, much larger introductory collegiate camps at places like Penn and our longer leadership level programming in New Zealand.

The two week length enables realization of technical and educational benefits prior to departing camp. That said: our objective is to enable the athletic self-awareness necessary for camp athletes to coach themselves over the long run - long after camp ends. As such: if better athletic self-awareness and technical improvements are your goal set (combined with getting some international racing in!), the Thames may be a good fit for you.

Our admissions process is the most thoughtful in the sport and we evaluate each athlete on a case by case basis.

This program is selective based on the need for safety and to create competitive boatings for racing.

While we look 2K and rowing experience, we are also very interested in your motivation and passion for rowing. Our 2K standards (minimum sub 8:20 for women; 7:20 for men) for this program are a small part of our overall admissions process. At our camps, the drive to improve leads to increased maturity and thoughtfulness - which leads to performance.

We also consider your ability to live, train, and support others in a community committed to utilizing challenge for personal growth. Sparks camps are unlike traditional training camps in that progress in self-awareness per your relationship with performance is as important as acute technical progress. Ideal candidates will complete the program with gains in both self-awareness and corresponding ability to improve long after camp ends.

You must be patient and mature enough to handle learning new things on a continual basis. It will be a break from your normal training meant to provide perspective and place you in a high-performance team environment and you need to be able to engage it thoughtfully with your peers. You will undergo selections for boating for the regattas, and you must possess the rowing maturity to handle your own racing while supporting your peers.  

We welcome your questions either via phone or in the chat box in the right hand corner.

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. These qualities along with our values of growth, kaizen, and plus one stroke dictate the culture our camp community forms around. Our focus is on utilizing rowing to create the self-awareness necessary to master one's relationship with performance.

England is the homeland of the sport, with the most robust rowing talent development program in the world. The coaching is excellent, and the opportunity to be selected and race in a competitive dual regatta will provide much benefit. More importantly like our other international programs, it offers students of the sport the ability to educate themselves (and get ahead) in what is a more advanced athlete development system than the US. Finally, given the group size and cultural activities - we expect students to find more than rowing performance on this trip. We also hope for them to find friendship, support for their journey, and joy.

England, the Tideway, Kingston and Molesey are all fodder for learning from one of the top countries to get collegiate recruits in the world - and the experience itself is far more unique than some of the more ubiquitious US junior regattas.

Regardless, many recruiters will say "A for effort, but what did you learn?"

Training and racing overseas will speak to some recruiters more than others, but all recruiters care about engagement with the sport more than the particulars of your summer program choice or race results. Given recruiting is a globally competitive "talent marketplace", getting some international perspective will help you - but in the end no one race or camp is going to provide the competitive rowing intellect necessary to succeed at the recruiting process. You are a composite of your experiences - so best to make them unique and highly educational.

The general age of program participants typically puts them more than a year out on college recruiting, but we have had a number of alumni who have gone on to row in college.  

Sparks multi-week cohorts are typically between 12 and 16 athletes. Coaching and operations staff ratios are set at 1:6, making overall staff to student ratio 1:3 - however, sometimes it is even lower.

Of chief importance to us is the quality of our cohorts - which we believe is a product of admissions, staffing, and group size to facilitate activities (eg. sweep boat rowing v. singles) as well as friendships that last long after camp ends.

This cohort combines with our UK Coxing Leadership Program (6 coxswains) to form a total camp cohort. As a team boat camp, the cohort size is generally larger than our other multi-week camps. The size of the group allows students to experience varying degrees of connection with different instructors and peers. Activities occur in large and small group formats to build community and enable exposure to all instructors and peers throughout camp.

At Sparks, we have reflected deeply on optimal group size for camp type and length after over a decade of running rowing camps. The standard in the outdoors education (e.g. hiking trips) is 12 campers at a 1:6 ratio with staff - who are generally undergraduates. We have improved this model for this large boat camp with a larger maximum group size for a better team feel while pushing ratios down with highly qualified staff (classroom educators and coaches with graduate degrees are normal in our staff pool) and an organized structure to better affect consistent performance improvement.

Campers will stay at the MK London hotel - a 10 minute walk from the Putney embankment.

At Sparks camps, we have two staffs: a coaching staff and an operations staff. Our operations staff is responsible for the experiential education and pastoral care at camp. We seek to maintain industry-leading 1:3 staff to student ratios at this program.

The staff lives amongst the athletes, and has oversight 24 hours a day. Unhealthy substances and/or behaviors are strictly prohibited.

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.  

Travel to and from London is not as big a deal as getting to Japan, but we recognize it's definitely a bigger deal than flying domestically. We seek to help families connect who would like their students to travel together, but there are a lot of ways to fly direct to London. We provide a direct flight from a major US hub for campers interested in traveling together.

The journey itself is part of the experience. Our international camps invite athletes to take a personal journey with the sport at its center. The time and maturity required in getting to and from London enforces a sense of distance and accomplishment in itself.

Our Program Director (already on the ground in England as students depart) tracks student travel into London, where they are picked up from the airport.

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

If your camper needs to depart the day after the program ends, we will have a staff member at the Holiday Inn Express: London Heathrow T4 the final night of the program. Staff cannot be responsible for campers as the camp will have ended, but they will be able to help your camper get checked in and answer questions.

If you have questions, we're happy to answer them in the box in the lower right side, or you can schedule a call with us.

Certainly - we completely understand your need to connect about this commitment!

We just ask you schedule a call with us (click here) given we're a very small office.

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