In 2020, Caldwell described the position of the IRA to Rowing Information:
“As a result of males’s rowing and [men’s and women’s] light-weight rowing aren’t NCAA sports activities, the IRA acts because the regulating physique, a lot because the NCAA does for girls’s rowing. We oversee the eligibility guidelines, the working rules, an athlete’s capacity to switch between faculties. We’re a parallel group.”
Caldwell turned concerned with the IRA within the Nineteen Nineties when he started administering occasions and finally was appointed commissioner. When he retired from his teaching place at Tufts in 2016 after 26 years, he remained within the position.
The IRA started with 5 member faculties—the College of Pennsylvania, Syracuse, Cornell, Columbia, and the Naval Academy. However in 2011, the group restructured below a brand new structure and bylaws and is ruled now by a board of 51 member faculties.
The IRA additionally introduced that Laura Kunkemueller will transfer from director of officiating to the brand new place of affiliate commissioner. Patrick Diggins, regatta director for the IRA and Jap Affiliation of Rowing Faculties Jap Sprints, will tackle further tasks as assistant commissioner for affiliate championships and can oversee the Nationwide Invitational Rowing Championship, New England Rowing Championships, and Girls’s Sprints regattas.
Howard Meisner, longtime USRowing referee and former Northeast regional coordinator for USRowing’s referee committee, has been appointed director of officiating.
“I get to work with actually good individuals; they’re invaluable,” stated Caldwell. “This isn’t a one-man band by any stretch of the creativeness.”
