Hey! I’m a High School Cox and I attended a College Crew Camp this week. One of the rowers that was assigned to my boat would deem my coxing as ‘terrible’ and would yell out in the middle of pieces – and not just stuff like “C’mon!” as some girls do, no she tried to call her own power 10s, right after I would call a power 10. Do you know how to interact with rowers like that? I wanna try to be polite and not someone totally rude and mean. I wanted to say something like “If you’re able to talk on the boat you’re not pulling full pressure!”. In case this ever happens again, any tips for dealing with over-bearing rowers who think they should cox?

Honestly? Here’s what I would really love to see a coxswain do in a situation like this, especially if it’s something that’s been a continual issue. Regardless of whatever you’re doing – I don’t care if you’re in the middle of a 1500m piece or doing cut the cake drills – stop. Just weigh enough and check the boat down. If the rower in question isn’t in stroke seat, stand up and get their attention. Look them dead in the eyes and tell them they have two options: one, shut up and focus on the one job they have or two, get up and switch places with you since they seem to think they can call the piece/drill better than you can. Take your mic off and hold it out to them too. I guarantee you, they won’t take you up on it. Give them one last chance and when they don’t take you up on it again, tell them fine, they’ve made their choice. If they have something to say then they can say to you/the boat after practice but until then, the only person making the calls in the boat is you. Then sit back down, let it go, and get on with practice.

Standing up for yourself (as a coxswain, as a person, whatever…) doesn’t mean you puff your chest out and try to act tough by saying something like “if you can talk you’re not pulling hard enough” because that literally has no effect on the offending person. (It’s also the most played out, unoriginal retort in coxing.) Too many (young, female) coxswains think that they have to be this universally nice person otherwise no one will respect them and that’s not how it works. Yes, you should be a kind, respectful person but that doesn’t mean you should be a doormat. Using this situation as an example, if you let this rower get away with yelling things out during pieces and being disrespectful towards you then that’s only going to make the other rowers think it’s OK to do the same thing (or at the very least, that they could get away with it if they did do it because the most you’ll do is say “if you’re talking you’re not rowing hard enough”). Obviously what I suggested at the beginning isn’t something you should be doing on a weekly basis (it’s really only a one-time thing because if delivered properly, one time is all it takes) and obviously you should never resort to personal attacks (do I really even need to say that?) but at some point you’ve got to draw the line and get over the fear that “they might not like me if I say something”.

Nine out of ten rowers (or maybe it should be seven out of eight…) that you cox won’t do stuff like this. In one-off cases where it’s been a frustrating practice or someone showed up to practice wearing their “I’m gonna be an asshole today” hat (for whatever reason), the best way to handle it is to still be firm with them and say “Hey, I get that you’re having a tough day/we’re having a tough practice but don’t take that frustration out on me/the rest of the boat by yelling things out like that. It’s not productive and only distracts people. If you have something to say or want to make a suggestion for how I could call it differently, either wait ’til we stop for a water break or wait ’til practice is over.” Most of the time when this happens, it’s just that person spouting off because they’re pissed about something and you’re an easy target. Just let it go. Well, let them know they need to back off first and then let it go.

What I think a lot of rowers don’t understand is just how frustrating this is for coxswains. The equivalent, to give an example, would be something like this: Imagine you’re on an erg and then all of a sudden your coxswain jumps in out of nowhere and yells “NO! What is this? That’s not how you do it! You’re supposed to do it like this!” and then grabs onto the handle and tries to wrestle it away from you while you’re still erging. You try to keep going but there’s this annoying person preventing you from doing that because for some reason they think they know how to do it better than you do, even though you spend about 10x the amount of time on the erg that they do since that’s your job as a rower. The same goes for coaches that try to yell over the coxswain during pieces – imagine someone sitting in the launch with you and constantly fighting you for custody of the megaphone, right in the middle of you saying something really important to the boat you’re working with. You have to think about it from their point of view and how you’d feel if someone were to do that to do you.

I could go on and on about this topic because it’s one of the ones that makes me go from zero to rage in about ten seconds but I think you get my point.