I made the decision to row in college. I had rowed all through high school as well so I was used to managing my schoolwork and being an athlete.
While looking at schools I thought I would be ok at a casual club program or even at a school that didn’t have rowing. The more I thought about it the more I realized that I wanted to be a part of a competitive team. I ended up going to a D1 school and rowed all 4 years. It turned out to be the best thing for me. I wasn’t on scholarship, but that didn’t matter to me. There were many benefits to being an athlete. We registered early for classes (after honors, before the seniors and everyone else) so we always got into the ones we needed. We had academic advisers just for the athletes. There were free tutors, computer labs. They helped us get housing in the on campus dorms and apartments with other athletes. There are NCAA limits to the amount of supervised training you can have per week, so as not to interfere with your studies. I’m not sure what it is for D2 and D3 but it was 20 hours in-season and 8 hours off-season. From an academic standpoint, there is a lot of support. They want you to succeed and they stress that you are a Student-Athlete, not the other way around.
We had plenty of time to do other things. They did tell us when to wake up, but that’s because practice was at 5:30am. We were never told when to go to bed or to go to class, although we were expected to maintain a decent GPA. Many girls on the team had jobs and internships. They were involved in other on-campus clubs and activities. If we went out to party it was mostly in the winter “off-season” and on Saturday nights. Technically we were supposed to be dry, but we were college students.
I wouldn’t say being an athlete took away from my college experience. In fact, I think it made it better for me. I’ll never forget sitting at graduation and a speaker saying “You are Blue” All I could think was that I was extra Blue because I was able to represent my school and wear those colors on the race course. It was one of the best feelings in the world. I feel that I have a stronger bond to the university because of my participation in a varsity sport.
Ultimately it is up to you. If you come from a competitive high school program, you will probably want to continue at that same level in college. My senior year we won States and I had friends from that boat who had gone on to college club programs and were disappointed. You do have to pick the school you like, in case you change your mind about field hockey and want to focus on other things.