Kent School Boat Club

The Kent School Boat Club was founded in 1922 on the banks of the Housatonic River as Kent School's boys rowing team. KSBC has two varsity boats and two junior varsity boats, which races in a few of the varsity races. KSBC only races in the spring, and conducts its spring training in Tampa during the school's spring vacation. In June 2010, KSBC won gold in the Men's Eight at the U.S Rowing Youth National Championship.

Kent School is known far beyond the banks of the Housatonic River in Kent, Connecticut. Kent is well known at England's Henley Royal Regatta, where its crews have rowed many times since first winning the Thames Cup in 1933. Kent was the first American secondary school to race at the Henley Royal Regatta, in 1927. The NEIRA (New England Interscholastic Rowing Association) championship silver bowls for the first and second boats bear the names of Kent's founder and first head coach, Father Frederick H. Sill and his successor, "Tote" Dixon Walker. Every KSBC oarsman knows the importance of sportsmanship and excellence to the school. Father Sill was a coxswain at Columbia University and built his school directly on the Housatonic so that with a river running through it, there could be rowing one day.

While Kent has had five headmasters since 1906, KSBC has had only four coaches, including Father Sill, "Tote" Walker `19, W. Hartwell "Hart" Perry and Eric Houston `80.

Kent's impact on scholastic and collegiate rowing is vastly disproportionate to its size. Among others, Hart Perry was president of the NAAO and was a founder of the National Rowing Foundation and the Rowing Hall of Fame in Mystic, CT. He remained the only American steward at the Henley RR until his death 2010. Steve Gladstone `60 also rowed at Syracuse, and has coached rowing at Princeton, Harvard, Brown, Cal Berkeley, California Rowing Club, and currently at Yale. Bill Stowe `58 stroked the Vesper Boat Club eight to Olympic gold in Tokyo in 1964, and coached at Columbia and the Coast Guard. Bill Pickard '67, rowed on a number of national teams, is a co-founder of the Pocock Rowing Foundation, and served on the committee that rewrote the NAAO and National Women's Rowing Assn constitutions to merge the two organizations and create the US Rowing Assn in 1979. Fred Schoch `69 has won many national and international races, and directs the world's largest rowing event, the Head of the Charles Regatta.Curtis Jordan `70, the former head of Princeton's rowing program, is currently serving as the High Performance Director of USRowing. Thad Bennett '71 coxed the Kent eight at Henley in '71 and served as the first Executive Director of US Rowing. Many others have rowed in world championships and in the Olympics, both establishing Kent's legacy in the 20th century and ensuring it will continue into the next one.

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