Guide Laura Uhle
This year, Executive Arrangements celebrates its 40th Anniversary! That is 40 years of working and connecting with great NE Ohio companies, recruits, new hires, and families! To celebrate, the EA team is posting videos and images that showcase our favorite NE Ohio locations and how they have changed over the years. These posts highlight just how progressive and awesome our region truly is.
Guide Laura Uhle brings us to one of her favorite places, the Oxbow Bend area of the Flats west bank. Here you can find the Cleveland Rowing Foundation, The Foundry, The Western Reserve Rowing Association, and Rivergate Park where rowers (and other people-powered watercraft users) get their boats in the water. A true rowing hub!
“Spending nearly six years watching my sons row for a high school team (Burning River Crew) on the Cuyahoga River, I never realized the long history of rowing in Cleveland and what it took to get us where we are today.
Rowing started in Cleveland on the Cuyahoga River in 1855 with two boat clubs, Ivanhoe Boat Club and Ydrad Rowing Club, competing against each other on a regular basis. The rivalry continued until the 1860s when the crews were forced off the river by heavy industrial traffic. Fast forward 120+ years, through a long industrial river history, a river fire, when a group of five rowers got together to bring rowing back to Cleveland.
Western Reserve Rowing Association was started in 1989 and has grown to nearly 1,500 adult and youth rowers. They oversee eight rowing organizations (high schools and colleges). They also host the Head of the Cuyahoga Regatta every fall attracting 525 boats from all over the country.
The Foundry is Cleveland’s newest addition to the rowing community. Their world class training facility is set in a historic complex in the industrial Flats. And their goal is to make rowing accessible for all youth of all income levels in Cleveland, aiming to teach young people about teamwork.
164 years after the first clubs, rowing is alive and well in Cleveland on a thriving Cuyahoga River.”