Announcing the 2024 Empacher-IRCA Scholar Athletes

The Intercollegiate Rowing Coaches Association is excited to announce our 2024 Empacher-IRCA Scholar Athletes. We are proud to offer our congratulations to these rowers and coxswains who have demonstrated what it truly means to be a "student-athlete".

We’d also like to thank Empacher Bootswerft for their continued partnership as our official awards sponsor.

In order to be named a "scholar athlete", rowers and coxswains must have met the following criteria:

• Athletes from all IRCA Member Schools are eligible

• Athletes must be in their second year or more of eligibility

• Athletes must have competed in their program’s top 3 boats during the current season or raced at the 2022 IRA Championship.

• Athletes must have, at least, a 3.50 cumulative GPA through fall semester.

With another year behind us, below are some numbers that further highlight these achievements.

• There were 638 rowers and coxswains who met the criteria set by our Awards & Polling Committee (detailed above), a 3% increase over last year’s 638 honorees and a 63% increase since the association began awarding this honor at the end of the 2021 spring season. They represent 61 teams (54 heavyweight and 7 lightweight) from 54 member programs.

• The average GPA was a 3.75 and the highest GPA was held by Caspar Griffin ‘26 of Stanford University with a 4.1.

• The highest number of scholar athletes from a single team was a tie between the Harvard lightweights and Yale lightweights with 26 each. The highest number from one program came from Harvard University with 62 combined scholar-athletes from their heavyweight and lightweight teams, followed by Yale with 41, and Penn and MIT, both with 32.

The full list can be seen in the spreadsheet below, which you can also view here or view/download as a Google Sheet here.