Tag: responsibilties

Advice from a former novice, pt. 2

College Coxing High School Novice

Advice from a former novice, pt. 2

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This is an email I got at the end of the 2014 spring season from a (then) novice coxswain at a D1 men’s program here on the East Coast. I’d included it within another post at the time but felt it warranted it’s own post, particularly since the first “advice from a former novice” post (linked below) got a lot of a positive feedback.

Related: Advice from a former novice 

“Hi everyone! I wanted to share with you all a couple of things that I learned after I walked on to my team as a novice coxswain. No experience at all in anything crew related. All I knew how to do was compete (I had been a varsity athlete in high school). In fact, I didn’t even know how to say starboard or skeg properly. The point is, I learned a lot along the way and ended up in the third varsity boat of a silver medal winning crew for a division one program, so anything truly is possible.

For the novices (and more experienced coxswains) out there, I have a couple of things to say that I feel are sometimes overlooked or forgotten.

Your job is to steer

I think this always bear repeating and it is certainly something that my coach harped on many times. You can’t let your emotions or competitive spirit get in the way of your main priority. And, I would say to not worry too much about your calls until you can steer, because steering takes up most of your focus. Calls will always be secondary to steering straight in a race since snaking adds meters and time to your crew’s efforts. Guys know how to motivate themselves, so really the best thing you can do is give them the shortest course, which occurs when you steer straight.

Tone matters

This is something that I didn’t realize I was missing until I listened to a recording of myself (which is why you should record yourself). When my coach gave me feedback, he said that I at times sounded frantic or doubtful, which not what you want your crew to hear. If I don’t know something, I either don’t say anything at all, or I just make something up (not always the preferable thing to do, but sometimes necessary). But no matter what, I’ve learned to sound confident in the decisions that I am making on the water. Also, when you get into a race, it shows that guys that you are just as invested as they are in winning, which is important for their mentality. They also appreciate it when you care just as much as they do.

You win some, you lose some

Sometimes you put in a lot of hard work and come up short. Other times you win by a foot. Just know that when you have done the best job you can do, there might be times when another crew rowed better. The sport is about working hard and always improving. You should always appreciate the work that you do, and strive to improve so that you have no regrets. It goes for coxswains just as much as it goes for rowers—coxswains can always improve as well.

I know this sounds simple, and it might not mean much coming from a novice rower, but as a coxswain looking back on my first year, I feel like these three things come up in a lot of the races I was lucky to be a part of. Listen to your coaches, work with your rowers, and best wishes to all.”

Image via // @pittsfordcrew

Coxing Novice Q&A

Question of the Day

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I’m coxswain captain for my high school team and I want to have a meeting at the beginning of our spring season next week with the novice coxswains to make sure they know what they’re doing. What do you think I should bring up? I know safety and general calls are big ones, I just don’t want to leave out anything important.

Great idea! Way to take the initiative and do that. I think the most important thing that you should talk about with them is water safety. That probably comes as a surprise but I really think that that’s an important topic that isn’t brought up or detailed enough. I’m planning on doing a post about it next week but if you want some bullet points beforehand, feel free to email me.

The key with having a meeting like this is to avoid giving too much information and overwhelming them. The minute they start feeling overwhelmed by what they’re hearing, that’s when they’re going to start tuning you out (source: every math class I’ve ever taken from like, 4th grade through senior year of college). I would pick five key things and no more than that. If you have more than five things (which you probably will) prioritize the most important ones and then have another meeting sometime next month. (That would probably be a good idea anyways.)

If I was doing it I would probably go in this order but it’s obviously completely up to you:

General responsibilities and expectations (minus the romanticizing and overly-flowery descriptions (words cannot describe how much I hate this); be straightforward and tell them what their job/role on the team is, what is expected of them from their teammates and coaches, etc. The clearer you are about this from the very beginning the less room they have later on when they’re slacking off and saying “I didn’t know I had to do that”.

Water safety

Basic terminology (and by basic I mean the most basic of the basics)

How to cox a boat off the racks, down to the dock, into the water, off the water, up the dock, and back onto the racks (make them actually do it too after you’ve showed them how to do it; you don’t have to actually use the boat but at least have them go through the motions)

How to get information off the ergs. Work with your coach to come up with a standard list of things to write down, that way everyone is always on the same page and the process is fairly streamlined (i.e. every time the rowers do a workout it should be automatically assumed that if you’re writing stuff down you should be getting their splits, average stroke rate, and time). Show them how to do that, then have them go through it a couple times so that you know they know how to do it.

A fairly atypical list I think but if you think about it, this is all pretty important stuff that no one ever goes over with coxswains in the early days of their careers (and if they do it’s on the fly or in a loud erg room). What to do on the water in the event of an emergency (medical, safety, etc.) is NOT something you want to try and figure out on the fly though because … well, I’m sure you can all figure out why.