Eric Carcich Reviews

Eric has always been a coach that has chosen favorites and I think he's gotten worse about hiding it over the years. As someone who was recruited by him, I was equally as excited as he was about the new experiences and opportunities for growth as he seemed to be coming to UMass. After the first year though, his intentions became more clear. Emphasizing his excitement for the incoming classes have served as a scapegoat for him for the past three years of stagnant conference performance (4th in 2021, 2022, and 2023). He has tried to move past these years of failure by excitedly looking forward to the classes ahead, and in the process ignores the hard work and adversities that the classes he did not recruit have put in. This continues now even with the athletes that he recruited himself, continuing his trend of hypocrisy and lying. As a previous rower, it breaks my heart to watch over and over again as freshmen who are so excited to row well and improve have their dreams and potential ruined by a coach who chooses his favorite athletes not based on how well they move a boat, but by how much they go and talk to him in the office and "build a relationship." While I agree it is important for coaches to have a relationship with their athletes, it starts with how much of a safe, trustworthy, and reliable space a coach provides to there athletes, and Eric provides no such thing. Additionally, after years of being coached by him, my confidence in him as a coach on a technical and athletic level has diminished. Every year, he has switched the type of rowing stroke that he considers the "UMass stroke" around winter time, and then switches back in the fall at the beginning of the next year. By doing this, he creates different strokes within boats and tension between athletes because no one adjusts quickly enough to his drastic changes (ex: pause at the finish changed to fast hands around the back end last year and the year before). There is also tension created between the athletes because of his selection processes. Eric's favorites are put in the top boat, coxswain or rower. They are certainly fast because there is not a lack of speed on the team, but the way in which he selects the top boat inflates the heads of the athletes that he choses and belittles the dedication of all those placed (not ranked-placed) below the 1st Varsity 8+. Eric also has a tendency to inflate egos by making lineups that are requested to him by his favorites, collaborating with them over the training plans, and considering their opinions in selection processes; all things that athletes should essentially have no say in. Overall, Eric is an indecisive man with a love for drama among his teams and I would not recommend him as a coach to any young athletes or any programs looking for a coach.

he’s an amazing coach that works his hardest to promote team culture and develop the athletes as people

He is a great coach, very easy to talk to and accommodating. Very transparent and is willing to have a conversation with anyone if something is unclear. I have never had a single issue with him or his style of coaching.

Eric has created a team continuously building for the future and an environment where we all love practices and pushing each other to be better. I completely disagree with some of the other comments but I think it’s because he was still so new in this role and had to set a foundation for the future. Eric is someone who is willing to work with anyone, you just have to go in and ask. He took a lot of our feedback last semester and implemented it into the training plan this year. And the difference is already so noticeable. A level of buy in is necessary for any team and I honestly believe that the negative comments have come from people who didn’t even try to put any trust in the training plan or in the coaches. He is genuinely one of the only coaches in the game who works and has such a close relationships with many of his athletes and genuinely cares about them.

in my personal experience he uplifts athletes and has created an amazing team culture at umass

Definitely the best coach I’ve ever worked with

A pleasure to work with!!

May come off as a nice guy, but he has no idea how to build a team environment. He is dishonest and combative when athletes bring up real concerns and issues. He wants to be a part of the popular cliques on the team and will overlook bullying of team members. He does not care about mental health, and anything he says when recruiting that may contradict that statement is completely performative. He is only focused on “building” the team with all international girls, big talk about our future as a program but really no action. I would have to guess any of these positive comments on this page came from his favorites athletes - if you don’t fall into that category (which is not based on performance, either), consider your career and all momentum shut down. He also has absolutely no respect for the extreme hard work of our walk-on athletes, anything he says about eventually granting scholarships to walk-ons is a lie. It doesn’t happen. I am also not sure if he knows what he is talking about concerning rowing coaching specifically. His corrections are often confusing and contradictory, and the way he decides upon lineups (at the last minute as well) is nonsensical and not based on numbers or performance. Overall, don’t come here no matter how much he pushes for it or what you see from athletes on officials, unless you want to leave hating the sport of rowing just like me- the team is slow and super fake and unhealthy socially. He lied to me and he will lie to you. I hope you see this if you are considering rowing under him, and that you run the other way. Really, I have no other motive in saying this than to help avoid you having to go through something even remotely similar to what I did.

He meant well but was always a little confusing