BCS is staffed with outstanding coaches, whose combined experience covers decades of rowing, and coaching, many with college, national and Olympic programs. Our coaches are passionate about the sport, and volunteer their time to transfer not only their knowledge to our rowers, but their love for the sport as well.

Craig Redinger – Head Coach

Craig’s athletic career spans a lifetime; beginning with youth baseball and swimming, high school football and track, and college pole vaulting. While studying Philosophy in UVA’s Honors Program, Craig served as the University of Virginia assistant swimming coach, during which time he discovered sculling, immediately fell in love with the sport and has competed in a single for over 45 years in open and masters’ events across the country and in Europe, recently taking 3rd in the 2018 World Rowing Masters Regatta, 2nd in 2021 and in 2022 took 1st in US Rowing Masters Nationals and 3rd in the World Masters Championships.  Retired as an international lawyer responsible for the German practice of a global law firm, he devotes his time to fostering start-ups in the area as a founder and board member of the Charlottesville Angel Network, teaching international M&A, coaching, training and enjoying the serenity of sculling.  Recently, he and his wife Martha, a world class CrossFit competitor and trainer, started the Sports Performance and Rowing Center to bring another level of fitness to the area.  All of his three sons attended Western Albemarle High School, and he and his wife have lived, other than a three-year hiatus in Munich, in Charlottesville since their college days.

Steve Bragaw

Steve has coached for WAHS Crew/Beaver Creek Sculling since 2014 and was the traveling coach for the WAHS crews at the US Rowing Youth National Championships in 2015 and 2016 in Sarasota, FL and Princeton, NJ.  Steve rowed at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT from 1984-1988. At Wes, he was part of sweep crews that had several undefeated seasons, winning multiple Little Three (Wesleyan-Williams-Amherst) Championships and placing strongly at the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) and Dad Vail Championships. In summer 1988, he coached a boat to the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta. Steve’s rowing dream is to coach a crew to the Royal Henley Regatta in England.  After earning his doctorate in American Politics at UVA, Steve taught for twenty years at Sweet Briar College, where he was the Carter Glass Professor of Government and chair of the political science department. He’s been an invited lecturer for the Supreme Court Historical Society, the Smithsonian Institution Associates Program, and The John Marshall Foundation, and served an appointed term on the Virginia Commission on Civics Education. Steve is in the political science department at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA, where he teaches classes in Constitutional Law, American Politics, and political theory.

Ellen Braun

Ellen earned a biochemistry undergrad degree from University of Massachusetts/ Amherst despite spending much of her time on two sports teams, volleyball and rowing. She was 2-seat in the UMass heavyweight eight that got a silver in the Dad Vail in her senior year.  After college, Ellen competed in road and track cycling and was a 4 year member of the US National Cycling Team, competing in the US and internationally. She won two national championships in track cycling and had another 5 podium finishes and two top-10 finishes at Cycling World Championships.  Eventually returning to grad school, Ellen got an MBA from George Mason, worked at Ernst & Young as a technology consultant and more recently at Capital One in technology, operations and post-merger integration roles. She’s lived in the mountains west of Crozet part-time since 1998 and full-time since retiring in 2015.

Boban Rankovic

Rankovic is a former Serbian National Team and Olympic rower, placing eighth in the Men’s Coxless Four at the 2000 Olympic Summer Games in Sydney, Australia. He won gold medals at the 2000 Nations Cup Regatta and the 2001 World U-23 Regatta.

Rankovic has coached numerous Olympians, All-Americans, and international competitors, as well as collegiate and high school rowers.  He served as the interim head coach at the University of Miami from 2008-09, and as the assistant women’s coach at the University of Virginia. Prior to that, he spent time as the Director of Rowing at Ronald W. Shane Watersports Center in Miami Beach.

Rankovic earned a bachelor’s in business administration from Dowling in 2003 and a MBA in 2004.  He and his wife, Margarat (who rowed at UVA) and their three sons reside in Charlottesville.

Bailey Hughes

Bailey Hughes started rowing and coxing at the College of Charleston, joining the Virginia Boat Club after graduation as coxswain, sculler, and Learn to Row coach. In 2018 she took a job as the boathouse assistant at the Peter Jay Sharp Boathouse in Manhattan, and in 2020 she became the Freshman Coach for the Fordham University Men’s team. She moved back to Virginia in 2022 to coach and manage operations for the VRA Men’s team and coaches for the Rivanna Rowing Club and the Beaver Creek and WAHS junior team. Bailey graduated from the College of Charleston with a BA in History and a BA in International Studies with a focus in Asia. She recently graduated from Drexel University’s School of Education with her MS in Sport Coaching Leadership with a focus in Rowing.

John Bryce

John Bryce became a sweep rower at Virginia Tech in 1997. As the lightest guy on the team, he sat bow seat in the men’s eight. Twenty-five years (and countless erg meters) later his wife convinced him to sign up for Beaver Creek’s learn to row program and get back on the water. With plenty of help from coach Craig and Quentin Bragaw, as well as several other students who helped John’s old bones remember how to get in & out of a boat, John made the transition from rowing sweep to sculling and was zipping around Beaver Creek in a single in no time. Inspired by coach Craig’s coaching style and energized by the entire experience, John jumped at the opportunity to join the BCS coaching staff.

Walker Hauptman