GLRF World Herald

24 May 1010 – Princeton; GLRF was one of five vendors at the inaugural launch of the USRowing Collegiate Championship Regatta 22 – 23 May 2010 on Lake Mercer in West Windsor, New Jersey. The location, just 7 miles from Princeton University, is the site of the US National Team training headquarters. The 2500 acre Mercer County Park surrounds the lake and makes for a beautiful setting for the races. The seven-lane buoyed 2000m. course has hand held starts and a dedicated Finish Tower.

The event allowed open entry, without affiliation, from any college or university for men and women, in regular and lightweight classes, and for 31 events in 7 boat classes: 1x, 2x, 2-, 4-, 4x, 4+, and 8+. As a result, there were unaffiliated entries from various small schools, as well as entries from larger rowing programmes like the University of Tulsa, University of Massachusetts, Villanova University, Loyola University, Duke University, Fordham University, Lehigh University, Colgate University, and Craftsbury Sculling Center, all told 89 entries from 18 clubs. One rower who rowed for Hamilton College will be competing at the Under23’s for Angola, where his parents live and where he learned to scull.

The weather was sunny and East Coast humid/hot on Saturday but then turned overcast and chilly on Sunday. Ex-Olympic gold medalist Pete Cipillone acted as the announcer for the final races on Sunday morning and his insightful and humorous commentary combined with the new live video feed provided by USRowing gave many of the spectators a great feel for the race.

With an investment of $15,000 in video equipment, USRowing has launched live race feeds for all of its events and the races can be viewed on the US Olympic Committee website which hosts the video feeds. The quality of the video is first rate with a camera crew in one of the chase boats as well as a camera at the finish line.

Gusty winds on Sunday morning made the video technicians nervous about setting up the 46” HD television monitor to showcase the race feeds but a perfect solution appeared when GLRF volunteered the hatchback of our rental car as the display case, parked inside an open tent. Naturally, all the spectators had to congregate right next to the adjoining GLRF booth to watch the feeds …

Medals were awarded in what some call the ‘British style,’ meaning that the boats came alongside the dock after finishing the race and the medals were draped around the necks of the rowers still in their seats. USRowing officials explained that the awarding of medals had to be run in this manner to accommodate the large number of rowers competing two and three times during the day. Race times were bigger than usual due to a sizable head wind blowing down the course.

USRowing has said they are committed to supporting the race event going forward, even with the light number of entries in this first year. Many of the collegiate programs said they just did not have the budget dollars to allocate to an additional event in the current year but they do plan to enter their crews in the next year.

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18 April 2010 – Los Angeles; The GLRF membership began its final march towards the millennia mark with the 900th membership registration by a Toronto, Canada rower yesterday. New member sign ups have seen a definite surge since the beginning of the year, averaging 12 – 15 new members a month. If the current registration rate continues, GLRF will see its membership expanding into the triple digits around October or November of 2010.

The top three countries by membership are now the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. The biggest draw in the membership expansion has been the existence of regional groups on Network Now!, the internal social network that serves to connect the GLRF membership.

With the upcoming launch of the GLRF online image gallery, Gotcha! Gallery, members should find even more reasons for logging in and interacting since the gallery features include shoutboxes, comment sections, and FavBoxes for saving favorite images into personal albums.

To better serve the GLRF membership, the All Oars forum has been upgraded with new features including multiple member blogs, a chat board, and more robust highlights of comments and interactions.

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29 March 2010 – San Diego; For the seventh year running, GLRF hosted a vendors booth at the San Diego Crew Classic, 27 – 28 March 2010 on Mission Bay in San Diego. The eights-only event draws collegiate crews, masters teams, juniors, and open entries from Mexico, the United States, and Canada. This year’s event featured 338 entries from 120 clubs.

Without a hint of the usual San Diego fog or the rainy Southern California spring, the sunny weekend weather created a spectacular backdrop for the races. Last year had seen some high wind conditions on the race course which resulted in two boats ejecting rowers who caught crabs. High afternoon winds typically favor the inside lane but this year the calm conditions meant all the races were evenly matched.

Powerhouse Stanford which had dominated the race medals in the past several years gave way to some of the usual competitive standards, University of California at Berkeley, UCLA Women, Marin Rowing Association, Long Beach Rowing Association, Palm Beach Rowing Club and Kent Mitchell Rowing Club. Some of the surprise winners included: Trinity College, University of Virginia, Temple University and Washington State University. Crews compete for a variety of race perpetual cups and trophies, 32 in all.

The GLRF booth was one of 24 vendors at the event this year. It was great to see fellow vendor alums and GLRF friends Erin and Amy from Pocock Racing Shells, Tom Gallagher from Sykes North America, Loralynn from Sew Sporty , Sue Hinckley from Resolute Racing Boats, and sexy sultry chick Margaret Christopher from Whirling Girl Jewelry. Our booth neighbors were the super nice guys from Sports Graphics on one side and the Sharp Cushman Wellness Center on the other. Sharpe was offering free bodyfat measurements so a lot of the guys were ‘getting measured’ right next door (somehow they thought it helped if they were stripped to the waist) and then compared their numbers with their friends. Let’s face it, guys like to compare themselves with each other…and it usually involves numbers!

Stopping by the booth to say hello were GLRF members from San Diego, Boston, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Austin, and Seattle. A big shout out to GLRF Member xxxSue for her willingness to spell those of us dying from drinking too much water … As usual, a lot of the collegiate women stopped in to check things out and several men looked over with multiple glances or ventured inside the booth in the company of a group. We had two unusual booth visitors, first among them was a group of rowers from the Delfines de la Bahia Rowing Club, San Felipe, Baja California, Mexico. They were glad to have some of the GLRF ‘Love2Row’ stickers and they came back several times to see the display of t-shirts. The second visitor of note was the Episcopal Bishop of Ohio, Right Rev. Mark Hollingsworth, Jr., who was impressed to see our booth at an event like the Crew Classic. He congratulated us on our presence and wished us well.

The event also was the first time many rowers had a chance to see the new GLRF Come Out and Row Henley shirt up close. The soft feel and the blue on grey colors made the shirt an instant favorite among booth visitors.

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02 Jan 2010 – Los Angeles;  The GLRF Regatta Advisory Group has been cut from the GLRF lineup.  Originally conceived as a way to provide consolidated GLRF membership inputs to gay-organized and gay-friendly regattas, the Advisory Group was met with limited use and fell into a comatose state in the last few years.  A new Regatta Advisory Forum has been created on the ALL OARS message board to allow all GLRF members a chance to participate in regatta discussions, and to create topics individually.

The impetus for forming the original Regatta Advisory Group was the incredible but daunting week-long 1998 Amsterdam Gay Games Regatta that featured a 2k race format with heats and finals.  Competitors found themselves stuck at the Bosbaan for most of the week as races were spread out to give athletes adequate rest.  It was felt that an Advisory Group could provide inputs on future regatta formats to ensure rowers’ interests were represented.

The Advisory Group was active during the 2006 Montreal World Outgames and the 2006 Chicago Gay Games, where the Group’s input played a major role in shifting the Chicago venue from the Chicago River to Crystal Lake, and in shaping the format of the Montreal Outgames Regatta.  However, with the growing community character of GLRF, it was felt that a forum format would provide a more representative voice for all GLRF members.

Currently, there are plans for gay regattas at the 2011 North American Outgames in Vancouver, the 2013 World Outgames in Antwerp, and possibly at the 2011 Asia Pacific Outgames in Wellington.  There are also some discussions of organizing a regatta for the 2010 Frankfurt X-Mas Tournament.

Any member is welcome to create a topic in the new Regatta Advisory Forum where all GLRF members can post their comments and thoughts.

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03 Sep 2009 – Los Angeles; After several months of testing and tweaks, the GLRF internal social network, Network Now!, was officially unveiled in a soft launch to the GLRF Los Angeles and GLRF London area members.  The service will be more widely announced at the end of September to ensure there are no hidden “bugs.”

Similar to other social networking services, Network Now! offers each member the ability to update his/her own activity stream through manual updates or from a direct link to a person’s Twitter account.  Members can also ‘friend’ others.  What differentiates Network Now! is that all personal profiles are limited to gender, geographic location, and rowing skills so that members can be assured of a continued level of privacy.  GLRF OnlineID’s are the only visible form of identification unless a member wants to upload a personal picture.  Photo and video sharing options from Flickr and YouTube provide great added rowing features.   One of the nice features of the video sharing is that the videos are automatically embedded in the page so web surfing is minimized.

However, the real strength of Network Now! shines as a community building tool.  Since most rowers belong to a variety of clubs in a given area or region, Network Now! provides a perfect medium to connect rowers at a social and community level.  However, the regional group possibilities are just one option.  With Network Now!, any member can form any group for any focus or interest.  Collegiate rowers can form groups based on competitive conferences, and coaches can form groups based on rowing skills: juniors, collegiate, masters, and elite.   Rowing areas of interest can form groups: open water, masters, and adaptive are just some of the possibilities.  Groups can serve to coordinate events and regatta participation.

Groups have three levels of access, depending on the amount of desired GLRF membership interaction: public, invitation-only, and private.   In keeping with the GLRF individual membership structure, every member can set his/her desired level of interaction with groups and other members through an extensive menu of notification settings, thereby minimizing excessive email updates.

GLRF members are encouraged to click on the Network Now! navigation button and join a group, or create your own.

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01 Sep 2009 – London; GLRF international membership continued its march towards the 1,000 mark with registration number 800 coming from a Dublin university graduate who had recently returned to London.

In the past two months, GLRF recorded 28 registrations from 7 countries with UK registrations accounting for just under 30% of the total new membership. At the current rate, GLRF may need to relocate to a posh office along the lower Thames.

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29 Jun 2009 – Vancouver;  GLRF hosted a vendor booth at the 2009 USRowing Northwest Masters Regional Championship Regatta 26 – 28 Jun 2009.  Under sunny skies, crews competed on mostly flat water with some occasional wind gusts that threw in a few start and finish complications (as well as booth display challenges). The event was held on Vancouver Lake in the city of Vancouver.  For those who might be confused, there are two Vancouver’s in the northwest region of North America: Vancouver, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia.

For GLRF, the event offers a chance to develop awareness among a large geographic representation of attending clubs and rowers: 45 clubs participated from Alaska, Texas, New Jersey, California, Washington, Oregon, and almost every club in British Columbia.  This year marks the third time GLRF has hosted a booth at the Northwest Masters Regional Championship.  GLRF members from Washington, Oregon and British Columbia stopped by to say hello, and even after 6 years of GLRF’s presence on the regatta scene, several rowers came into the booth with surprise and wonder having not known of GLRF’s existence. The GLRF Bisweptual shirts were the hot ticket as rowers brought their entire team to the booth to view the shirt and read the GLRF.info dictionary definition of bi-swept-u-al.

USRowing hosts regional masters events all over the United States.  Traditionally, the events are meant to offer local competition where clubs in a given regional area are given a competitive priority in a race (if an ex-regional club wins first place, the highest placing regional crew will also earn a gold medal).    The US northwest region includes Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Montana, Wyoming, and North and South Dakota.  However, due to the tremendous increase in popularity for this event, the competitive priority rule has been suspended. As of this year, the competition is simply race and win.  In the past four years, the regatta has experienced an exponential growth, with entries jumping from 500 to 900. This year alone saw a 100 + increase in crew participation: 970 people competed in 900 entries.

James Rawson, the USRowing Northwest representative indicated that time is so tight that the regatta committee has had to eliminate the traditional 20-minute breaks.  The Friday race schedule starts after the coach and coxie meeting at 10:30h with races held on 6 minute centers from 12:00h to 18:30h and on Saturday and Sunday, races arer held on 7 minute centers beginning at 07:00h and extending to 17:30h and 15:00h, respectively. Rawson said that on a per capita basis, the Northwest Masters Regional Championship is as well subscribed as the US Masters National Championship, and has effectively reached its capacity in its current configuration and structure.

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15 Jul 2008 – Le Var; He’s an Italian rower but he lives in France and when he clicked “submit,” he became GLRF member number 700. The GLRF membership continues to grow as an international community with new members joining from Europe, Australia, and North America. Europe now accounts for 24% of the GLRF worldwide membership.

The continued growth of GLRF is cause for celebration but our conservative estimate for a realistic worldwide community is 6,000 members. As the membership roster continues to grow, it will help to show the the size and scope of the worldwide gay and lesbian rowing community.

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20 Dec 2007 – Los Angeles; GLRF sends annual holiday greetings to 64 recipients. Each year GLRF creates a special holiday greeting to send to the national rowing governing bodies of every country where GLRF has a member. This year, that number climbed to 24 countries and FISA. In addition, cards are sent to those in the rowing industry who have demonstrated a strong support for the GLRF organization and mission. On behalf of the GLRF membership and the GLRF organization, thank you for your ongoing support.

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03 Dec 2007 – Los Angeles; The GLRF website is getting a makeover. The project, slated to take several months, will introduce a new template design, and feature more robust online tools to enhance the community interactivity. In the coming months, the website will finally be login-enabled for all web pages and not just the message board. Other conversions will include a migration to Dreamweaver, more php integration, and a fully functional mysql database.

During the remodeling, please bear with some of the dust and construction materials.

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