Cooper River to host NCAA women's rowing national championships in 2023

Cooper River is ready for some national attention.

The NCAA women’s rowing national championships will be contested on the famous waterway in 2023, hosted by the Camden County Boathouse.

“We are honored to be hosting the 2023 NCAA Women’s Rowing Championships at one of the nation’s finest rowing venues,” said Freeholder Jeff Nash, liaison to the Camden County Parks Department. “Cooper River Park has evolved and grown into an elite rowing course with the best straight away lanes in the country and very little current. We are looking forward to having athletes, teams and families come and stay with us for this momentous event and accommodating the top rowers competing at the highest levels in the United States.”

The women’s rowing championships will be held over a three-day period, beginning on the last Friday in May 2023.

Cooper River and the Camden County Boathouse have hosted numerous events including the Stotesbury Regatta in 2018, which had more than 6,000 competitors from 195 schools. The prestigious Gold Cup Challenge was held on the Cooper River for the first time the following year after being held for decades on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia.

Five NCAA championships have been awarded to the Philadelphia region in this latest bid cycle.

The men’s lacrosse championships will return to Lincoln Financial Field for 2023 and 2024 while the  2025 wrestling championships will be contested at the Wells Fargo Center for the first time since 2011.

The Wells Fargo Center is also slated to host the first and second rounds of the men’s basketball tournament in 2026.

Tom McGurk is a regional sports reporter for the Courier-Post and The Daily Journal, covering South Jersey sports for over 30 years. If you have a sports story that needs to be told, contact him at (856) 486-2420 or email tmcgurk@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @McGurkSports. Help support local journalism with a Courier-Post subscription.