Sacramento State Start Lake Natoma Invite

This is a short clip that gives a good example of how to call a start. I’m not a huge advocate of counting down the strokes unless it’s two or three strokes leading into a move or stride (i.e. “let’s shift in three … in two …  in one, now…”) but that’s beside the point in this particular recording. The takeaway here is her tone and how she delivers her calls – sharp, quick, and concise.

Bucknell Men’s Novice 8+ Grand Final ECAC New England Championships

Overall this is a good recording for a freshman/novice race. He starts off the first 500 by spending a lot of time noting their position on the other crews, which on one hand is good that he’s giving his boat that information but there’s definitely a better way to present it. You don’t want to put all your energy into talking about the rest of the field because that takes the focus away from your boat, which is the number one priority. You want to make sure you’re throwing down a clear, established rhythm right as you settle to your base pace and then once you’ve got the boat running and swinging well, that’s when you can start shifting your focus to how the race is evolving around you.

At 1:25 when he’s building into their upcoming move, it feels super frantic when he yells “get the bow ball ahead”. I get what he’s going for but I think this could have been executed a little cleaner. The subsequent calls though are good.

As the race goes on, he’s doing a great job of telling the crew where they’re at on the rest of the field … which I know is contrary to what I said earlier but the difference is that now is actually the appropriate time to be making all those calls. You hear him talk about how close they are to Michigan and Ithaca right before and right after they cross the thousand – that would have been the opportunity to shut them down with a move. When you’ve got crews that are half a seat or one seat off of you, you’ve gotta shift your priorities from whatever you’re currently doing to putting them in your rearview mirror for good. You don’t want to be on the losing end of that seat race once the other crew finally decides they’re sick of you guys sitting on each other.

Last thing to point out – look at the courses of each of the coxswains as they’re coming down the course. Trinity was swerving a bit in the last 250m or so, which probably/definitely cost them a seat or two. You can see Bucknell and BC doing the same around 5:00 and in the last 10-15 strokes, respectively.

Other calls I liked:

“Our race to win…”

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

Tags: calls coxswain racing recordings starts