I joined my university rowing club with the intention of rowing for them, however, as the club is very small and I coxed a little in autumn, I find myself being asked to cox, both for my squad (novice women) and the two senior squads. I’m 5ft10 and 125lbs, so really quite big for a cox. I really don’t want to lose my place in the main novice eight if I’m never going to be a decent cox, but equally, I’m not the strongest in the boat (probably around 4th based on technique and ergs) so coxing might be a good way to go. I don’t know whether to dedicate myself to coxing, and accept I’ll be on the large side, or stick to rowing. Could you shed any light on the frequency and success of coxes who aren’t pocket sized? Thank you.
I personally don’t know too many non-pocket sized coxswains but the ones that come to mind were all lightweight rowers that switched to coxing due to an injury. They didn’t do too bad with it, the only problem they had was fitting in the seat since they were several inches taller than the average coxswain. Even though coxswains usually are pretty tiny, it’s the weight that matters more than anything else. A good number of men that cox are in the 5’8″ to 5’10” range (Zach Vlahos, the senior men’s coxswain, is 5’9″…) so it’s definitely feasible if you wanted to keep doing it.
If you’re fourth on the ergs you’re in the upper part of the the middle of the pack which leads me to assume that if you trained hard enough you could probably be one of the top people in there. Only time can tell whether or not you’re a good coxswain unless you do something so egregious right off the line that your coach decides that it would take more time and effort than it’s worth to teach you to cox than it would to just coach you towards being a stronger rower. I would talk with your coaches and see what they say but if you’ve got the option I’d probably stick with rowing. I would tell your coaches too that you don’t want to lose your spot in the novice 8+ and let them know that your preference is rowing so that they know and can either find someone else to cox or make sure that you’re at least getting an adequate amount of training time with your own boat.