Michigan’s Gregg Hartsuff Added to RowOn Coaching Conference
The 2023 RowOn Coaching Conference gained another exciting speaker on Tuesday as Row Ontario and AMP Rowing announced the University of Michigan’s Gregg Hartsuff will attend the conference as a featured speaker.
Hartsuff, who has been the head coach of Michigan’s men’s rowing team since 1994, will present to a captive coaching audience on how to build and lead a program to sustained success in his session, a topic he’s become very familiar with during his tenure with the Wolverines.
“Having long admired the passion Canadians have for our sport, it is an honor to be asked to present at the RowOn Coaching Conference,” said Hartsuff. “I am designing what I hope will be a very informative presentation that conveys some of the successful techniques I have employed while coaching at the University of Michigan and internationally, that brings large groups of athletes together, growing as a program, and peaking at our national championship. The subtitle of the presentation could be ‘How to get athletes to enthusiastically fundraise $3,000 a year and win while doing it.’ Thanks for the invitation and I will see you in December!”
The Wolverines compete in the American Collegiate Rowing Association (ACRA), an association that was formed in large part due to the efforts of Hartsuff who spearheaded its formation in 2007 after collegiate club programs were excluded from the Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA). He was ACRA’s first President and helped it grow from a fledgling organization to a national championship that had over 1500 competitors and 60 organizations attend after his presidency ended in 2013.
“We are very excited to add Gregg to the 2023 RowOn Coaching Conference lineup,” said Al Morrow, Partner, AMP Rowing. “Gregg’s knowledge and experience in how to build a club rowing program will resonate with all the club coaches attending the Conference. He was on our radar from the outset of the year as someone we really wanted to be one of the speakers because of the value he will bring to the Ontario Rowing Community. I’m really looking forward to sitting in and seeing him present in December.”
Under Hartsuff, the Wolverines have been the most successful collegiate club rowing team since 1994, making him the all-time winning club coach in the history of U.S. college rowing. Michigan Crews coached by Hartsuff have won over 160 Dad Vail, ECAC, and ACRA medals, with 60 of them being gold. He is only one of two coaches to ever win the prestigious Dad Vail and ECAC Varsity 8 titles in the same year (2005) and has won the second most varsity eight titles in the history of the Dad Vail (5). Additionally, Michigan has won two IRA medals, and has the highest finish of a club team in an eights event at the IRA.
Hartsuff’s Michigan teams have won numerous medals at the ACRA National Championship every year and has always won the men’s team point trophy. In all the Michigan men have won 75 medals at the national championship the past 15 years. Hartsuff has also coached at the international level, as the Senior Worlds team men’s single sculls coach in Milan, Italy in 2003. In 2015, he was the head coach of the World University Games team for the USA, and the Head Coach of the 2018 World University Championships team. Hartsuff has also coached at numerous national team camps and development camps.
The RowOn Coaching Conference will once again be hosted in partnership with AMP Rowing and will take place on Dec. 2-3 in Welland. In June, Josy Verdonkschot was announced as the Conference’s first keynote speaker. Verdonkschot, whose coaching experience spans the globe, is the current Chief High Performance Officer at USRowing and will deliver a keynote speech titled ‘How to Build and Sustain a High Performing Culture.’
Stay tuned in the coming months for further announcements on the full conference session schedule and registration information.
AMP Rowing was established in 2018 by three long time members of the rowing community, Al Morrow, Michelle Darvill and Peter Cookson. All three principals in AMP Rowing are well known in the international rowing community, having collectively been involved in various capacities at over 45 World Championships and nine Olympic Games. In total, the three partners of AMP Rowing have over 100 years of experience in all aspects of rowing from involvement at the community level to Olympic rowing.
