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.
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.
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.
