Any rowers out there?

There's a thing called "catching a crab" which is when you let the blade of your oar enter the water at the wrong angle, and it can get people hurt...

Essentially, when you're doing a rowing stroke the blade is perpendicular to the water while it's under water, then you turn it to be parallel to the water as you glide forward and pull the oar back, and then just before you sink it into the water again you twist it back around so it's perpendicular. If you don't get it all the way to the right position, your blade slices through the water instead of catching the water and giving the resistance that moves the boat forward. So as the bottom part of your blade slices forward, the top part comes back really fast and whacks you in the torso. Your blade can also tangle with the blade of the person in front of you, screwing up their stroke. If you're going fast enough (and if you're in a racing skull, which is pretty damn tippy to start with) you can capsize the whole boat.

Everyone catches a crab every now and then, but if you aren't paying attention you might do it too often and get in trouble.

ETA: If you google rowing and "catching a crab" you can see some videos of it happening.

Other than that - something that could get people hurt? It's hard to think of anything because mostly people are responsible for their own equipment, so getting someone else hurt would be tricky. For high school rowing, at least in my area, there should always be a coach boat (a motor boat) with life preservers in it... maybe she could forget to put the preservers in? But that's really the coach's responsibility.

Swing an oar around and break someone's nose. After being warned not to swing the Oars around without looking. That would be pretty easy to do.

Walk away from a four you're carrying on your shoulder so only three kids are carrying it and they drop it. That's a good one because its breaking an almost sacred rule of carry your own boat, plus goes against the spirit of teamwork.

Sometimes a coxswain is like, a person with no legs or otherwise physically disabled and small...maybe dropping said small person in the water while setting him in the boat.

Walking a single down to the dock and concussing someone with the stern of it.

Being too hungover to row without puking, at a regatta.

Take up smoking.

I have to say I damaged a boat as a coxswain in 10 th grade while judging the angle to line up to go under an unfamiliar bridge. I did not get in trouble, though nobody was very happy with me. I also caught a crab in a race as a HS rower...not that uncommon with nervous kids. Most stuff that falls under the 'dumb kid mistake' category won't really get you kicked off high school sports. It's kind of already assumed that even well intentioned kids are hormone addled screw ups.

Kitty Pryde said:

Swing an oar around and break someone's nose. After being warned not to swing the Oars around without looking. That would be pretty easy to do.

Walk away from a four you're carrying on your shoulder so only three kids are carrying it and they drop it. That's a good one because its breaking an almost sacred rule of carry your own boat, plus goes against the spirit of teamwork.

Sometimes a coxswain is like, a person with no legs or otherwise physically disabled and small...maybe dropping said small person in the water while setting him in the boat.

Walking a single down to the dock and concussing someone with the stern of it.

Being too hungover to row without puking, at a regatta.

Take up smoking.

I have to say I damaged a boat as a coxswain in 10 th grade while judging the angle to line up to go under an unfamiliar bridge. I did not get in trouble, though nobody was very happy with me. I also caught a crab in a race as a HS rower...not that uncommon with nervous kids. Most stuff that falls under the 'dumb kid mistake' category won't really get you kicked off high school sports. It's kind of already assumed that even well intentioned kids are hormone addled screw ups.

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A single incident might just be par for the course with teenagers, and not get you kicked out of rowing, but a pattern of neglectful screwing up might do it.
Say she gets caught idly swinging an oar, gets warned, swings the oar again (separate occasion) and hits something hard and cracks it. Gets told off, and warned. Somehow manages to have another oar incident. Smacks another rower in the head, ambulance, etc. Maybe knocks the kid into the water? Near drownings are scary.
Or, a couple of oar incidents, then, not watching where the back of a single scull is going and hits someone. Worse, is carrying the single scull, and kind of wiggles it and jokes about hitting someone, implying that she just doesn't give a damn, is not repentant, etc.
If the idea is that her life is spiraling out of control, this might work better than one incident, where being dumped from the team would look like over-reacting.
It could also show the escalation of her problems.
Also, I liked (well, not really) the too-drunk or hungover to row. Just who you don't want sitting behind you in a skinny, tippy scull: Someone who keeps moaning "I think I'm gonna puke, oh god, I'm dying".
She might get dumped by her team-mates, regardless of what the coach thinks.

Oh yeah, frimble makes a good point. And that makes much better drama as well.

I'll echo what everyone else said and add two more.
When everyone is pulling the shell out of the water, if someone isn't in sync or pulling their weight, it could result in some type of chaos (causes everyone to drop the boat, people fall in the water, etc.).
If someone is rowing out of sync, it can cause the handle of their oar (in a sweep) to jam the person in front of them. This hurts like hell, and if the rower continually does it, it could result in a fight or some other type of drama.

Niiicola said:

Oh, here's another question. If somebody falls out, is there something you're supposed to do to avoid hitting them with your oar? Is the coxswain supposed to let you know?

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I've never heard of anyone falling out, but I only rowed for two years. Your feet are literally strapped in, and you have a low center of gravity. Maybe it's possible on a single or double, but it would be difficult to do on a four or eight. If someone goes in, it's more probable it would happen at the pier.

i've only heard of it happening once, with a college novice guys 8, and the boat would be going fast enough that they would be past the swimmer before the coxswain was able to call out anything. If you were goofing around to an extreme, you might fall in i guess.

One of those YouTube videos had a guy falling out of an eight, but he was screwing around - looked like he'd caught such a bad crab that his oar ended up behind him (must have gone right up over his head, I guess) and he pulled his feet out and was trying to climb back over the oar - pretty weird circumstance.

I've seen boats tip, but I don't think I've ever seen an individual fall out, except for at the dock.

It can happen if you're not screwing around. I've umpired a race where somewhat caught an 'ejector crab' - basically he caught such a bad crab that the oar hit him in the chest and he flew clean out of the boat - I had to klaxon the whole race. It would have been HI-larious if another boat hadn't been coming at him at high speed - one of the blades nearly took his head off.

... he was fine though!

Yeah, it's REALLY hard to fall out of a racing shell. You're locked in good and tight. Getting soaked by passing motorboats that ignore the "No Wake" rule kinda sucks though. I've caught many a crab, and had my oar smack me in the face and stomach as a result. Not fun, man.

Random real life situation, don't know if it'll help, but: the girl in the Number 2 seat on our team was diabetic, and had to keep a tube of emergency glycerin under her seat when we went to Nationals one year. We had a chat to make contingency plans if she happened to get an . . . "attack," I guess? I dunno what you call it, but she was in danger of going into shock depending on what her blood sugar was doing. Since I was in the bow, I was only one who could SEE her, so it was my job to yell a code word to the rest of the boat so they'd know what happened, then quickly pass her the tube and grab her oar as well as mine to hold them steady while the other two got us out of the racing lane.

We really did have to do that once. Went like clockwork. Scary though.

ETA: And obviously we had to drop out of that particular regatta. If our coach wasn't as awesome as he was, if he was a MUST WIN NO MATTER WHAT, MAGGOTS! kinda guy, he might have kicked her off the team, or yelled at all of us for not finishing or something. Just trying to think of dramatic scenarios here.

ETA2: The oars are locked in too, by the way--they can float around uselessly and turn upside-down, but they don't generally come off the boat while you're in the water. In case you weren't aware. So whacking someone with an oar is the kind of thing that will only happen on land.