Day: August 18, 2016

Coxing Masters Q&A

Question of the Day

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I graduated college (men’s ACRA club) last spring and get asked regularly to cox competitive master’s boats. I always have fun coxing once I have been on the water for a few minutes, but am looking on advice for how to get comfortable with these crews faster.

I started coxing in college (your blog has been a huge help!) and was our top cox junior and senior year but I don’t have a ton of experience with jumping into a boat full of strangers. I don’t have the time to join/commit to a club right now (full-time work and night school for masters) so I enjoy filling in but it is definitely different than having a boat of rowers that I know well and vice versa. After thinking about it, I realized my biggest two challenges are:

1. Being comfortable “calling out” guys who are more than a few years older than me.

2. Coxing boats where I know few/none of my rowers (IE. Was asked by a friend to cox an 8+ he was bowing, then was asked by the stroke to fill-in for his club. So in the first boat I felt okay because I knew one person well, the second offer is intimidating since I wouldn’t really know anyone.)

I’m sure the more I do it, the more comfortable I will be but I was wondering if you had tips for any of these?

If you’re coxing on an infrequent basis or regularly with new crews that you’re not familiar with (meaning a new crew every time you go out), I think you’ve just gotta get over the “fear” of not knowing anyone and accept that that’s the trade-off that comes with not being able to join a team full-time. Obviously working and grad school take precedence so it’s not something to feel guilty over but you just have to recognize that you’ll be sacrificing those regular interactions that help you get to know the rowers better.

Related: Hi! I am a coxswain who has coxed on my school’s team for 5 seasons. I seem to do better when put in a boys boat (I’m a girl). In the past, I have attributed this to the fact that the girls on my team are incredibly immature and difficult to deal with. It’s gotten to a point where no cox on my team wants to cox a girls boat. How would you approach this? Also, I have recently gotten an opportunity to cox for a local club’s masters women’s boat. How would you adjust to a such a different group?

Most of the masters crews I’ve coxed have had some sort of regular meet-up, usually a weekly thing at various bars around town, where they’d get together on a weekday after work to grab beers and hang out for a bit. Not everyone could make it every single time but at any given point I think at least 3/4 of the boat was there. The boat I coxed right after I moved to Boston would also go to breakfast at a diner near the boathouse nearly every morning before we all went off to work. Going out with whatever boat I was coxing when I could was a great way to get to know them and it really translated to how comfortable I was when we were on the water, even if I was only going out with them when they needed someone to fill in for their regular coxswain (which is what I ended up doing once I started coaching at MIT). If the people you’re coxing do something like this, make time to join them. You don’t have to go every time but even going just once would be great.

Related: So I’m the most experienced coxswain on my juniors team, and was asked to cox a master’s eight. It isn’t a racing boat or anything. Some of the masters just wanted to try sweep. The thing is both of my coaches and a few of the board members for the juniors team will be in the boat, as will my dad. I’m afraid that if I mess up, or if my coach isn’t a fan of my style, it could affect boat placement going into spring. Any advice?

As far as being comfortable calling out people who are older than you, I talked about that a bit in the second post I linked to. It all comes down to confidence and remembering that in the boat, they’re just rowers and aren’t any different than the guys you coxed in college. They might be closer to your parents age than your age but the goal is still the same, which means how you cox them should be the same. They’re not gonna scold you just for saying “Bill, little late at the catch on that one…” or “Marjorie, hold the finishes here…”.

I wasn’t sure how to approach coxing masters when I first started either but it quickly became apparent that with few exceptions, they were just as willing to listen to me and take my feedback as any other group of rowers I’ve coxed. Just add this to the list of things that coxswains overthink that no one else actually cares about.

Coxing Q&A Racing

Question of the Day

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I’m trying out for New Trier Novice Rowing in a couple days (go NT! I was super excited to see New Trier in the 8+ Midwest Championships recording!) and wanted to know what the real rules are on swearing in a race. I heard that you can get DQ’d but it is super rare and most coxswains swear anyway. What are your thoughts?

I’ve talked about swearing before whenever it comes up in the recordings posts but I kinda laid out how I feel about it in the recruiting post linked down below. Tl;dr, as long as you’re not doing it gratuitously or being over-the-top obnoxious about it … who cares. If you’re sending audio off to coaches you should definitely be mindful of how much swearing there is but if you have a really great recording that you think demonstrates your best abilities as a coxswain but you also say “fuck yea” in it a few times, just throw it in iMovie and bleep it out before you send it off. Should take 10 minutes tops and you’ve spared the adults from having to hear the dreaded “f-word” without sacrificing an opportunity to show what you can do.

Related: College recruiting: The process of being recruited as a coxswain, pt. 2

You can get DQ’ed, it is pretty rare (in my years of experience, at least), and … I wouldn’t say most but a decent number of coxswains do swear anyways. If I had to guess maybe a little more than half of the recordings I’ve listened to in the last four years have included some amount of swearing. I haven’t run the analytics on them but just loosely thinking about the ones I’ve listened to (not just the ones I’ve posted on here), coxswains of men’s collegiate crews swear the most, followed by junior men’s coxswains, collegiate women, and junior women. I don’t think the gender of the coxswain has made much of a difference though, it tends to be more about the gender of the crew.

Anyways, I asked the refs on Twitter (solid account and super responsive if you ever have questions – highly recommend following them at @USRowingRefs) just to get their input and because I couldn’t remember what the official rule said so above is what they told me.

To the right is what Rule 2-410 from the rule book (page 29) says. The unsportsmanlike conduct thing is a given (and I’ve said that before on here plenty of times) but, like they said, ultimately they have to hear it and decide to act on it.

Usually during our home races I’ll drive the officials in the launch and last year I asked one of them about this (because a coxswain was swearing pretty loudly during the race but it was in the vein of the “fuck yea” example I gave earlier) and they said that they personally just use discretion when it comes to issuing penalties or DQ’ing someone. They likened it to when you get pulled over by a cop for speeding … if you’re 5-10mph over the limit but otherwise driving safely the officer will use his/her discretion and probably let you off with a warning. If you’re driving like you’re auditioning for Tokyo Drift though then they’re obviously gonna come down on you a lot harder. It’s the same with the swearing thing … you need to be mindful of the rules but keep in mind that some refs might not be as lenient as others.

This probably isn’t the clearest reply to your question so I’ll just repeat what I’ve said in the past: I’m not gonna say “don’t do it”, just be smart, use your judgment, and without hesitation, take full responsibility if there’s fallout from it.