The biggest sport in Oxford
Merton College Boat Club (MCBC) is our thriving rowing community at Merton. We offer rowing and coxing at all abilities – from complete beginner crews, to our high performing 1st eights. We row at our newly renovated boat house on the Isis, and at a beautiful river stretch in north Oxford called Godstow, which runs alongside Port Meadow.
The best way to meet students
In particular as fresher, rowing is a fantastic way to meet loads of people in your year and throughout College. MCBC has a vibrant social life that accompanies the training and racing. We have members in the JCR, MCR, and SCR, and so you spend time with, and connect with, a huge range of people that you may not otherwise meet. The Club holds all sorts of social events throughout the year, including brunches, barbecues, events with other college boat clubs, and nights out, including in freshers’ week – where usually around 1/3 of first years take part.
Every term after racing, the Club holds an evening to celebrate all its members. This includes the iconic Summer Eights dinner, on the final day of bumps racing in Trinity term. This consists of a drinks reception, formal dinner, and party afterwards, to celebrate MCBC’s week of racing, to reunite with alumni, and to welcome in the incoming Boat Club Committee.
Fitness at your pace.
There is absolutely no minimum level of fitness required to try rowing. The first few weeks of rowing will be almost entirely about the technique of the rowing stroke; once you master that, then you can worry about making the boat go fast!
You can also do land training as little, or as much, as you’d like. This includes training on a rowing machine (erg), in our dedicated Erg Room in the Sports Pavilion, as well as circuits, runs and cycle rides.
Everything at your pace.
When you join rowing, there will be no expected number of sessions per week. It will be purely a sign up session by session basis. This means signing up is completely non-committal, and you can find training times that suit you.
Particularly in your first few months of rowing, everything will be entirely optional: water sessions, land sessions, racing.
As we move closer to bumps racing, training starts to get a bit more full on, particularly for our first and second crews. Many of our members choose not to do bumps racing as they only want to do a bit of rowing here or there – MCBC will entirely accommodate this.
Are you more of a leader?
Coxing is also an incredibly fun way to be involved in the boat club. Our coxes are the masterminds behind the boats; steering the crew, and providing technical and motivational feedback to the rowers. Almost all of our coxes start learning at Merton, no experience is required!
No experience needed
We usually have 30+ sign ups to the sport every year – almost all of whom have never rowed or coxed before. With a few weeks of training, new joiners with no previous experience go on to join our 1st and 2nd eights, racing in the iconic Oxford bumps rowing racing: Torpids, and Summer Eights.
Here for the racing?
The bumps races are highlights of the year for both rowers; the aim being to catch up to, or ‘bump’, the boat in front of you, before the boat behind you ‘bumps’ you! We’ve had a very successful year in 2024; in Summer Eights, MCBC bumped 15 crews – better than any other college! In particular, both our Women’s first and second eights bumped 5 crews each, and hence achieved the prestigious award of ‘blades’.
We also enter Oxford based races against other colleges. This includes head races (time trials) such as the Isis Winter and Spring Leagues, and regattas (side by side races) such as Autumn Fours.
At MCBC, you can also get involved with training and racing at beautiful stretches of water around the country. During a rather flooded winter in 2023, we held training days in Gloucester and London. We also had the pleasure of entering races such as Bedford (where one of our crews claimed the gold medal!), Wallingford Head, Quintin Head, and Men’s and Women’s Head of the River Races in London – one of most prestigious rowing events in the country. We also had an Easter training camp at an iconic rowing lake in Somerset.
Get involved. Get in touch.
To join our wonderful club, sign up at the Merton freshers’ fair to try out rowing or coxing, and join as many sessions, or as few sessions, as you’d like. There is no experience or fitness level required. If you have rowed before, please do get in touch! You’d be welcome to train right from the start of term with our senior crews.
If you have any questions please do get in touch via the Contact page of the website.
We really look forward to hearing from you over the summer, or meeting you in freshers’ week!
