Legacy Events Archive
Welcome to Rutgers Men’s Rowing Legacy Website. If you rowed for Rutgers, this site should serve as your connection to your time On The Banks! This site seeks to represent our shared passion of crew since its birth in 1864 as the first campus sport to its periods as a varsity and non-varsity rowing program. It’s also a work in progress as we seek your reflections, your contributions to this site. We speak to our own memories. Did you row in the cedar/oak wood era or poly resin and fiber era? Was Bill Leavitt your coach or Steve Wagner? In the end, our hands got bloodied and blistered pulling together for Rutgers. The notion of “Legacy” has many definitions. In our context, we interpret this to mean a connection to our rowing past and a connection to the heritage of rowing that continues to benefit the image and prestige of our alma mater, Rutgers.
Our alumni as students consistently defined the student athlete image, leading all campus sports academically. Back in 2005, Rutgers inducted 57 members into Inaugural National College Athlete Honor Society Class. 20 of 57 rowed for Rutgers. That’s academic dominance! As you review our site, you will see our many achievements both individually and as a team. Rutgers Crew manufacturers Olympians and National Rowing Champions like no other non-Ivy league educational institution. Look at our Notable Alumni. Our alums are heads of medicine, industry, finance, education, science, engineering. Rutgers Crew produces more rowing coaches, many in elite schools unlike any other.
Rutgers is deeply connected to the river that runs through it. It pays tribute to it in its school song, “On The Banks Of The Ole Raritan.” "At Rutgers, we have a natural preoccupation with our place in college football history when Rutgers played Princeton in the first intercollegiate football game in 1869. It was still a big deal 100 years later when I attended its centennial equivalent. Yet, little appreciated is the fact that Rutgers Crew, known then as the Rutgers Boating Association, was established five years prior as the first campus sport in 1864.
More significantly, many of the players on that historic Rutgers Football Team also rowed for Rutgers in the spring of 1870 against Harvard. Most notable was football Captain William J. Leggett RC 1872 who valiantly replaced their best rower Claudius Rockefeller at the last moment. Rockefeller was down with a fever. Leggett “in spite of tender hands, rowed well to the last.” Leggett became the Rutgers Crew stroke in 1871 and captain in 1872. William J. Leggett is in the Rutgers Athletic Hall of Fame for football. He excelled in two sports while at Rutgers, football and crew. Playing in multiple sports was common for a small college, before athleticism became specialized in our modern era. Leggett stood out in both.
