The Mon River is the site this Friday of the annual Gold and Blue Regatta, an intrasquad stand-off between the members of WVU Women’s Rowing.
If you’ve passed the Mon River on your way to work this week, you may have spotted some boats rowing their way through the chilly morning fog. That was the West Virginia University Women’s Rowing team gearing up for its 2025 season—and you can spot them again on Friday, April 18, when the river becomes the battleground of the annual Gold and Blue Regatta.
The regatta stands out from other competitions, making it a staple on the team’s calendar. It’s an intrasquad event featuring the team’s 47-member roster divided into two squads—the Gold Team and the Blue Team—organized largely by the rowers, rather than the coaches. It encourages rowers to place themselves on the other side of the megaphone, says head coach Jimmy King.
“A lot of our rowers, when they graduate, will go back to their local club at home and do some coaching,” he explains. “This is a chance for them to look at things from the coach’s perspective in terms of what goes into race day and coordinating the team.”
The regatta is scheduled to commence at 11 a.m. with around five races running at 20-minute intervals, concluding around 1 p.m. Boats will launch from near the Westover Bridge and race to the team’s boathouse under Table 9, and spectators are encouraged—so grab a bite to eat and find yourself a vantage point on the team’s docks, along the rail-trail, or at the Ruby Amphitheater.
Don’t limit yourself to the role of spectator—the Mon River has more than a dozen access points for launching non-motorized boats, and Morgantown Adventure Outfitters rents kayaks at the bottom of Walnut Street.
King says the Mon River gets a bad rap for its past history of pollution, but decades of cleanup have made it a prime spot for recreation. “When I first started coaching here, I never saw herons anywhere on the river. A few years later, I started to notice one, then another, and now they’re everywhere,” he says. “The Mon is a great recreational river, because there’s not a ton of traffic on it and you’ve got multiple launch points.”
If you miss the regatta, you still have one more chance to see the team compete on their home turf this season—on Saturday, May 3, the team will face off against Robert Morris University and Duquesne University on the Mon River. Or, just watch for rowers sporting gold and blue next time you pass the river.
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