Tennessee Crew, UT’s coed rowing club, was first recognized as a sports club in September 1971 and is among the oldest collegiate rowing programs in the Southeast. Its first equipment consisted of two 4-person shells (one 36 years old and the other in need of major repairs) donated by Belknap College (New Hampshire—operated from 1963 to 1974). The club scheduled three competitive events in spring 1972.
On Sunday, November 5, 1975, Tennessee Crew hosted Knoxville’s first rowing and sculling competition, named The Head of the Tennessee because of the river’s origin in the nearby French Broad and Holston Rivers. The club had six entrants in the competition. In 1980 two members of the Rowing Club, Jim LaBorde and John Clarke, became national champions by winning the two-man rowing competition in the small college division of the 46th annual Dad Vail Regatta on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. In fall 2006 the men’s crew won the gold medal at the Head of the Hooch Regatta, the second largest fall race in the nation.
For many years, the Tennessee Crew rowed from the Knoxville Glove Factory, until that structure was razed to provide a housing site for the South Knoxville Waterfront Development. The teams then rowed from McWherter Park, with the Knoxville Rowing Association, and then, with the Knoxville Rowing Association, built a boathouse on Scottish Pike as part of the South Knoxville Waterfront Redevelopment.