Month: October 2014

College Q&A Recruiting

Question of the Day

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Hi! I’m a high school junior and I’m fairly certain I want to row DIII in college. When does it make sense to fill out recruitment forms? I’m going to visit a college I’m potentially interested in in about a month and I was thinking of filling out their form and maybe sending the coach an email but I’m not sure if I’m serious about the school yet and I don’t want to waste their time. Thank you!

Now would definitely be a great time to fill out the recruiting forms, especially since you’re going to visit some schools soon. I would also send an email to the coaches at the schools you’re looking at, just indicating your interest and that you’ll be on campus, would it be possible to connect while you’re in town, etc. That way you can get some information on the program while looking at the school and save yourself some time down the road (when you’ll likely be busier with school, SATs/ACTs, etc.) if you decide that you actually are interested in applying here. I only applied to a small handful of schools (like, three I think…) but I emailed several coaches beforehand just to get info on their programs so that I could look at all of the athletics and academics at the same time. I did this while I was still considering a larger range of schools and like I said, ultimately it just saved me a lot of time in the end.

Related: I’m a junior starting to look into the recruiting process. What would a good first email to a coach be formatted as? What should I include? How long should it be?

It’s not really a waste of anyone’s time unless you’re leading them on by saying you’re interested when you’re really not (that goes for coaches when talking to prospective athletes too). You’re not at that point yet though so there’s nothing wrong with reaching out and introducing yourself, especially since you’re just at the beginning of the wonderful process that is applying to college. If you decide the school’s not for you, that’s cool –  as coaches I think we’d all rather you come to that conclusion sooner rather than later anyways (more for your benefit than ours too, to be honest).

College Coxing Novice Q&A Racing

Question of the Day

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Hi! I’m a freshman coxswain on my college’s club crew team and I coxed for four years in high school. My team is going to our first race this weekend and it’s a head race. We only have about 1000 meters of water to use when we practice, so we haven’t actually rowed a 5k at practice and my boat has only really had one practice together. How do I go about coxing a head race when my boat hasn’t been together very long and some of the boys in my boat have never even rowed 5000 meters continuously?

There’s a first time for everything, right? Obviously things aren’t going to be perfect because as you said, you haven’t rowed together for very long and where you train doesn’t allow you to actually practice the distance you’ll be racing so one of the things that you could/should do is try to keep the focus on maybe two or three basic things (i.e. the set, the sequencing, and the timing). You know how you cox hard steady state pieces during practice where you’re not racing but there’s still that intensity about the piece and the focus is mainly on the technical aspects of the stroke, having enough power and ratio to get some good run on the recovery, etc.? That’s what I’m talking about. I’d approach it like that while including some hard 10s and 20s as you see fit.

Related: All about Power 10s

Having your expectations adjusted accordingly lets you (and your crew) shift your focus to things that can actually help you get better in the long run. Rowing 5,000 meters for the first time, both individually and as a crew, might not be easy but if you go into saying “here are our goals, this is what we’re going to focus on” then you can come off the water hopefully being able to say that you worked on them and felt them get better over the course of the race, in which case you could say that you had a successful race … vs. going into it with the sole goal of getting from Point A to Point B as fast as possible and only making calls about walking on other crews, “power 10!”, etc.,  all while knowing that none of those things are realistic for your crew to be trying to do right now. Hopefully that makes sense too.

The pressure of being in a race situation is obviously something they need to experience and learn to manage but your biggest responsibility will be to keep them focused on whatever goals you or your coach gives them (set, sequencing, timing, etc.) and not let everything fall apart once they start realizing how difficult it is to row full pressure at 30+ SPM over the course of 5,000 meters. Pacing will be important, especially at the beginning when they’re like “huh, this isn’t that bad… *tries to row full pressure at 38spm with no semblance of timing, set, or technique*”. As an experienced coxswain this is definitely something that you’re capable of doing so those would be my suggestions for how to cox them. Make sure you talk with the rowers and coach sometime in the next couple of days to figure out what they feel the current strengths and weaknesses are so you can start planning your calls accordingly. Good luck!

College Coxing Novice Racing Video of the Week

Video of the Week: “Ignatius, stop rowing”, pt. 3

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Really? Really?

That novice boat should have been disqualified and given a serious talking to by the regatta officials with their coaches present. (Supposedly they only received a 20 second penalty.) This goes way past your standard novice screw-up. The blades of the two boats were overlapping which means they were probably less than 10 feet apart. This was almost a head-on collision between a varsity four at full race pace/pressure and an eight that appeared to be rowing at least by bow 4. It doesn’t matter that they’re novices, “oh they weren’t going that fast”, “they probably just didn’t know where to go”, etc. … NO. Not buying ANY of those excuses.

Coxswains, I implore you to use your common sense and pay attention to the traffic patterns so you know where the travel lanes are and where the actual race course is. I don’t care if you’re a novice or varsity – pay attention. Varsity coxswains (and coaches, because … it’s your job …), you should be asking the novices multiple times if they understand the course, the traffic pattern(s), etc. so that there is no question that they’re prepared when they go out on the water and aren’t going to be at risk of putting themselves or another crew in danger. Novices, you need to suck. it. up. and get over being intimidated by asking questions and ask someone if you don’t know where you need to go. There are plenty of people on land that you can ask, in addition to regatta officials and other crews on the water. You should also have your head on a swivel at all times so that situations like this don’t happen.

There’s really no question with regards to how the coxswain from Marietta College handled this. Given the nature of the situation, I think he did well. I mean, what else can you do other than make a split second decision to either try to get the other crew’s attention and/or drastically alter your course? He was loud, made a good effort to get the coxswain’s attention, got his crew right back into it afterwards, and didn’t appear to have to make any steering adjustments. Saying “way off course, coxswain” is pretty much the tamest thing he could have said in that moment so props to him for not losing it on the other crew. Trust me, as much as you’d probably want to in that situation … don’t. Find the regatta officials afterwards and talk to them or go find the crew’s tent/trailer if you know what team they’re from and let their coach know what happened. It’s not about throwing them under the bus or trying to get them in trouble so don’t use that a reason to not say something later. The only way situations like this are going to be prevented in the future is if people speak up and give the coaches/officials a chance to address with the coxswains where they need to be on the water, either again or simple more effectively this time.

HOCR: The course in meters

Coxing Racing

HOCR: The course in meters

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Previously: Getting to the starting line || Steering through the bridges || Landmarks along the course || Steering around the turns || Race plans || My general race plan || Yaz Farooq’s coxswain clinic || Race plan “hacks”

Over the last week I’ve gotten a few questions about whether anything exists that tells the distance that each of the landmarks are from the starting line or from one another and since I wasn’t aware of anything and those of you that asked weren’t able to find anything, I figured I’d just make something.

Related: HOCR: Landmarks along the course

I used RowDistance, a site made by Andrew Campbell, so the numbers aren’t exact but they should be fairly close. You could also do this using Google Earth. I did this three different times and where I found the biggest discrepancy in meters is from the start of the Eliot turn all the way to the finish. My numbers were about 100m different from each other depending on how I laid out that part of the course, which just goes to show how much things can vary depending on what line you set yourself up for.

I also rounded everything up to the nearest -00 or -50 just for the sake of simplicity (although during the race I’d probably just round up to the next closest 100m because otherwise it becomes way too much effort). The first row is the only one that you should ideally know, the rest are just there because I figured “why not…”.

You can either click to enlarge the image above or check out this spreadsheet to see everything.

Image via // @dosdesignsltd

Coxswain Recordings, pt. 25

College Coxing Racing Recordings

Coxswain Recordings, pt. 25

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University of Tennessee 2011 Head of the Charles Women’s Champ 8+

Overall, this was a very well-steered race. Her Weeks turn was practically perfect so I’d definitely recommend studying her course through the bridges and around the big turns. Coming around Eliot, see how close the buoys are to her riggers? That’s exactly what you want. As they’re coming under the bridge the video resets to the beginning but if you jump ahead to 30:00ish you can see the rest of the piece from Eliot to the finish.

I felt like the coxing throughout was OK (definitely plenty to talk about but nothing super noteworthy) but the key thing you should takeaway from this is how she handles the course. Pay close attention to where she’s lining herself up in the straightaways and on the upcoming bridges, where the shell is relative to the buoys, etc.

Vesta 2012 Head of the Charles Women’s Champ 8+

This is a good recording. Nothing really sticks out because she executes and steers pretty well throughout the entirety of the course. Overall it’s just a really good example of how to handle the race. One thing I’d definitely pay attention to though is the first 90 seconds. You get a really good idea of what the start of the race is like in terms of staging, what the officials are saying, how they bring you to the line, etc., which can be helpful if you haven’t raced the Charles before.

Other calls I liked:

“Extend into the front a little more, bring the handles to me…” Meaning to make sure you’re getting fully compressed and getting your full reach/extension.

You can find and listen to more recordings by checking out the “Coxswain Recordings” page.

Pete Cipollone’s 1997 HOCR Recording

Coxing Racing Recordings

Pete Cipollone’s 1997 HOCR Recording

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So as some of you pointed out yesterday, the YouTube video that contained Pete’s recording from the 1997 Head of the Charles was removed due to copyright claim from row2k. Linked below is the fixed link on row2k that I highly recommend you bookmark since this is pretty much the only place online that you can find the full recording.

Related: Pete Cipollone 1997 HOCR recording and Seth Bauer 1997 HOCR recording

As a bonus, Seth Bauer’s audio was also fixed (neither of the audio links on there have worked in years, which to be honest is probably why it was uploaded to YouTube in the first place) so you can listen to his race as well, which is also from the 1997 HOCR. He coxed the 10 year reunion crew of the 8+ that won gold at the Copenhagen World Championships in 1987.

Image via // @davesarazen