The Hewitt School has had a crew program, affiliated with Row New York, for five years. The crew team practices three days per week, and it has done so every year the program has been around. The season for rowing starts in the spring, along with varsity badminton, varsity tennis, middle school track and field, and varsity track and field.
Although the Hewitt crew program has been around for five years now, there is one thing that separates this crew season from all other years and from all other sports that Hewitt offers: practices start at 5:00am. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be at school for an entire day? The girls on the crew team don’t have to. Many days, they are here for just that – almost 12 hours straight.
The team members, in grades 8 through 12, are Amanda Levit, Elizabeth Dolgicer, Jamie Russo, Julia Dunetz, Rebecca Meyer, Susannah Meyer, Carolina Neely, Ryan Reiss, Stephanie Reyes, Marlena Rubenstein, and Emi Santandreu. Most of these participants have to wake up at around 4:00am – 4:30am every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday morning to get to practice on time. Some may get up even earlier, depending on where they are coming from.
It is, though, more complicated than just coming to school in the morning. Mr. Erwin Josephs makes an early-morning commute to school so that he can be here before all of the girls and their coach. He unlocks the building and turns the lights on. Without him, Hewitt would be like a deserted dark hole, which is not very welcoming to middle and upper school students. The team’s coach, Peter Costas, must also come to school at the same time.
The girls on the Hewitt crew team don’t have to show their commitment to the team as other athletes would – it is simply implied as their alarms abruptly wake them up at 4:00 in the morning so that they are present for practice. Most people cannot even imagine doing that. So just remember, when you are in school, complaining about how early you woke up or how tired you are, there is always a girl on the crew team who actually has the right to say that.