‘It’s a Philly Thing’: Documentary goes inside the Drexel-La Salle rowing rivalry

When the Dad Vail Regatta gets underway Friday, the rivalry between the La Salle and Drexel men’s varsity eight boats could add its latest chapter.

The Dragons are led by coach Matt Weaver, who rowed for Roman Catholic in high school and Penn collegiately and coached at Washington and Temple. Drexel has won the last three men’s eight varsity races at the Dad Vail, which moved to the Cooper River in Pennsauken in 2023 because of dredging on the Schuylkill.

At La Salle, coach Ivo Krakic, a Drexel rowing alumnus, saw his varsity eight finish a close second each of the last two years. Before taking the La Salle job, Krakic worked under Drexel director of rowing Paul Savell during his final year of school and briefly worked with Bill Manning, who was the interim coach for four months in 2021. Manning now is the women’s rowing coach at Penn.

The ties across the programs are what interested Colin Stewart, a former Drexel rower and filmmaker, to create what began as a 15-minute film. Stewart, a native of Upper Township, N.J., rowed with Krakic, then a senior, in 2016-17, and rowed under Savell, then the coach at Drexel.

» READ MORE: What to know about this week’s Dad Vail Regatta on the Cooper River

In 2022, there was coaching turnover across the area rowing scene. La Salle, Drexel, and Temple had new men’s coaches that season. Stewart‘s original idea was to profile the Philly-area programs ahead of the Dad Vail Regatta, but when he sat down with coaches and athletes of La Salle and Drexel, the connections and parallels between the programs were too great to ignore.

“There was a really great story to be told about these coaches and the effect that coaches have on programs, how they inspired each other,” Stewart said. “Ivo saw the success that Drexel had, and he wanted to bring that to a small program like La Salle and build something of his own.

“And Matt Weaver, he coached over. At the University of Washington, was part of the national championship-sweeping crews. … He wanted to come Drexel and bring that to Philadelphia. So you have these two really dedicated and passionate individuals just going at it.”

From there, the documentary, It’s a Philly Thing, was born.

The documentary was shot, produced, and edited by Stewart‘s production company, Five Tribes Cinema Productions, which included some of his short films from college, but the company also does live production for NBC Sports Philadelphia.

It’s a Philly Thing was inspired by the documentary Five Days in August, which Stewart saw at the 2019 Ocean City Film Festival in Maryland. That film follows two teams that were “good friends and rivals” through the 44th annual White Marlin Open, the world’s largest and richest billfish tournament, as 353 boats competed for a $4.9 million prize.

Stewart wanted to explore rivalries in rowing, but the COVID-19 pandemic slowed that down. But after approaching La Salle and Drexel with his idea, he knew he had something special.

» READ MORE: Drexel men’s varsity eight holds off La Salle to three-peat at the Dad Vail Regatta

“It‘s a love letter to Boathouse Row, to the Dad Vail Regatta, to Drexel and La Salle,” Stewart said. “It‘s very positive and it‘s exciting, and it was really emotional for both sides because both these teams are dumping in so much time and effort into this, and the rivalry between them is so positive, and it has just changed both programs dramatically.”

Long before his documentary got off the ground, Stewart was known as the Drexel crew videographer, often filming practices and races. Those archival videos, which date back 10 years, also coincide with Krakic’s time at Drexel, which helps bridge the connectivity of the programs, Stewart says.

Utilizing GoPro cameras, drones, multicamera setups, and other equipment, the documentary follows the day-to-day operations of each crew, from workouts to practices to competitions. The 2-minute, 13-second trailer for the film features a snippet of the livestream from the men’s varsity eight final at the 2024 Dad Vail Regatta.

“The ability to kind of highlight what rowing means here in Philadelphia and what rowing means at Drexel and Boathouse Row, I think to kind of give that picture to a bigger audience is great,” Weaver said of participating in the documentary. “I think Philly is really kind of the epicenter of rowing here in the U.S.”

Added Krakic: “I think Philadelphia is one of the best places in the world to row. It‘s one of the central and most important rowing spots in the U.S. — people of all ages, high school, novices, masters to national team rowers, the collegiate rowers, it‘s like where rowing began. … That and Boathouse Row, it‘s a very, very special place.”

A big proponent of “naturally shot” documentaries, Stewart would go out on launches with each crew to capture the sights and sounds of the rowers. What originally was a two-hour cut has been trimmed down to 90 minutes.

Both programs are excited to have their crews showcased in the documentary and hope the film shows what makes Philly rowing special — and the camaraderie the sport brings.

“What we want people to take away from the documentary on our side of things, that there is a great level of really competitive rowing here in Philly,” Weaver said. “And with that, there also comes a lot of respect, not just between Drexel and the La Salle, but also Temple. Penn doesn’t race to Dad Vail, but we have a ton of respect for those guys.

“If you get a team that comes here to Philly, and there’s guys that come here to Philly to row, you’re going to work really hard, kind of like the ethos of the city,” Weaver said. “You have to be a little bit gritty. … The team that I think works the hardest, comes together the best as a team throughout the season, is really going to be the one that rises to the top here in Philly.”

Stewart showed a mostly finished copy of the documentary to La Salle on Monday and has plans to show Drexel’s crew the documentary after the Intercollegiate Rowing Association championships on May 30 and June 1 on the Cooper River. The full documentary will be an entry at the Philadelphia Film Festival, which is set for October, and Stewart hopes to debut his full 90-minute film there.

The Dad Vail Regatta is Friday and Saturday, starting at 8 a.m., on the Cooper River in Pennsauken. The men’s varsity eight grand final race is set for Saturday at 5:10 p.m. Expect Drexel and La Salle to be among the boats vying for the gold medal.