Head Coach: John Williams
crew@udel.edu
John L. Williams provides legal counsel to the team and had been a part-time assistant coach, boatman and financial supporter for the University of Delaware Men’s Crew since 2001 before stepping into the role of head coach at the end of the 2022 season.
A Wilmington native, he attended Tower Hill School and started rowing in 1991 with the Wilmington Youth Rowing Association. After high school, he rowed four years for Williams College in Massachusetts, including three years in the first varsity eight. His collegiate career included a victory at the New England Championship Regatta in 1996 and a third place finish in the ECAC “Champion Regatta.” He competed twice at the Henley Royal Regatta both his freshman and senior years. Notably, in 1997, he set the course record at the Head of the Charles Regatta in the Club Eight that stood for 14 years. After college, he started coaching rowing at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia where he attended law school. After law school, in 2001, he started sculling competitively and coaching at the University of Delaware. He was frequently seen coaching while rowing his single along-side the crews or wearing a suit while driving the launch. In 2003 he won the Head of the Charles in the Club Single in a field of 57 competitors. He still competes with the Wilmington Rowing Center master’s crew and has won first-place medals at USRowing Master’s Nationals and regularly competes in the Club Four event at the Head of the Charles, where his crew has won third, fourth and fifth place medals, despite his boat having an average age about twice that of the other crews in the event.
Professionally, he practices business and estate law as the President of The Williams Law Firm, P.A. He is also President of Agents and Corporations, Inc. (www.incnow.com) which is an online e-commerce incorporation service. Over the past 15 years, IncNow has provided numerous jobs to coaches and recent graduates from the University of Delaware Men’s Crew. He is active in the Wilmington start-up environment. He helped start a software company to use blockchain technology and artificial intelligence to manage and automate business organizations and recently spoke at TEDxWilmington about this technology.
He is currently the President of Wilmington Rowing Center. WRC operates a boathouse with about 150 masters rowers and 150 scholastic rowers. Additionally, he is the Chairman of the Kalmar Nyckel Foundation which operates the Official Tall Ship of Delaware, a 300 ton authentic working replica of the ship that founded New Sweden on the banks of the Christina River in 1638. The organization has over 200 volunteers who contribute over 40,000 volunteer hours per year to its educational mission. The Kalmar Nyckel Foundation also operates the Copeland Maritime Center, which is a newly built award-winning maritime museum. He serves as the Vice President of the Christina Conservancy. He was appointed by three Delaware Governors to serve on the Delaware Natural Areas Advisory Council. He is membership chair of Delaware’s Chapter of the Society of Colonial Wars, President of the One Commerce Center Condo Council, advisory board member of the Delaware Founder’s Initiative, board member of Rides for Vets, Vice Chair of the American Bar Association’s Partnerships and LLCs Committee, ABA Section Advisor to the Uniform LLC Protected Series Act, Vice Chair of the 18th Representative District of Delaware, co-founder of the Christina Navy, member of the Rodney Inn of Court, was honored by Delaware Business Times as “40 Under 40” for leaders and innovators, and was recently nominated to be an Honorary Commander of Dover Air Force Base.
He lives in Newark, Delaware in a house with boat access to the Christina River.
Lightweight Coach: Tristan Snow
Tristan is running the Varsity Lightweight Squad under the direction of Coach Crawford.
He came to Delaware in the fall of 2014 as the freshman lightweight coxswain and eventually made his way to the 1V Lights for the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 seasons.
In the Fall of 2018, Tristan coached the Freshman Lights to a 3rd place overall and 1st among lightweights at the Princeton Chase, before moving into the role of assistant the next spring. As assistant he helped Chuck bring the 1st and 2nd Varsity to win Gold at ACRA in a first for the team.
Tristan has gained some international experience in coaching by taking two alumni -Cooper Hurley ’18 and Jim McCullough ’19- through the 2019 PanAmerican Games in Lima as the USA Men’s Light Double.
Tristan has also began his career with D150 Fueling as Vice President of Accounts, working with many former teammates
Heavyweight Coach: Jim Harker
Coach Emeritus: Chuck Crawford
Chuck has resided in Delaware since his graduation from Rutgers in 1973 where his business is headquartered. He serves as President/CEO of ACW Corporation which owns and operates twenty Arby’s Restaurants. He is married with three grown children and three grandchildren.
Chuck competed in rowing during the sixties and seventies. As a rower, he rowed in national youth (junior) and elite lightweight championship crews that placed third in world junior championships and first in the lightweight championship.
Chuck has served as an assistant and head coach at the high school, club and collegiate level since 1978. His first major coaching success came in 1980 while he served as Head Coach at St. Joseph’s Preparatory School in Philadelphia, which won the Scholastic Rowing Association of America Championship and finished second at the Royal Henley Regatta in the Princess Elizabeth Cup Competition.
Chuck successes include coaching many national champion crews at the high school and club level, along with an earlier stint serving as the first head coach at the University of Delaware from 1991 thru 1996. He coached the US Junior Men’s 8 in 1980 and 1982, which won a silver medal. He also coached the US Men’s pairs at the 1983 Pan American and Men’s fours at the 1991 games. He built both the Delaware men’s and women’s programs into very competitive teams in a very short time, having both programs finish in the finals at the Dad Vail Regatta before resigning to return as an assistant high school coach at St. Joseph’s Prep and head club coach at Penn AC. In 2000 the athletes he worked with at St. Joseph’s Prep won the Princess Elizabeth Cup at the Royal Henley Regatta.
Chuck returned to Delaware in the 2001-02 season and the Blue Hen crews quickly rose to a very competitive level. In his first year back, the lightweight varsity 8 finished second at the Dad Vail Regatta and the next year finished first in the same event. The Heavyweight Varsity has also been developing into a formidable crew. The Delaware Men’s Crew has consistently been among the top finishers at the Aberdeen Dad Vail Regatta winning the men’s overall point trophy in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2017. The Lightweight Eight Varsity Crew has finished first or second in all of the Dad Vail Regattas that it has competed at since 2002.
Chuck also pays attention to the Heavyweight squad with his direction and counsel. The Heavyweight squad races in many of the same Regattas including the Dad Vail Regatta, where the Varsity 8 and 2nd Varsity 8 both finished third in 2017. Additionally, Chuck earned the USRA Peoples’ Choice Collegiate Coach of the year in 2016.
Associate Coach: Nic Pereira
Associate Coach: Nick DePompeo
Nick DePompeo is a 2007 graduate of the University of Delaware.
Nick began his rowing career in 1999 as a coxswain at Monsignor Bonner High School in Drexel Hill, PA.
He was named Monsignor Bonner High School’s “Coxswain of the Year” in 2003. He continued as a coxswain for the University of Delaware’s Freshman Lightweight team,and later as a JV and Varsity lightweight rower.
As a coach, Nick has worked with Newport Rowing Club in Delaware and Malvern Preparatory School in
Pennsylvania. His crews have medaled at the Stotesbury Cup and USRowing Mid-Atlantic Championship
Regattas. Nick has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Delaware and currently works
as Automotive Product Manager for Tenneco, Inc.
