Tag: teammate problems

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches Training & Nutrition

Question of the Day

By readyallrow November 22, 2013

OK regarding the coxswains working out, I’m a coxswain who typically does abs and stuff on my own at home to stay fit and this season I started doing the ab circuits with the team but I have very strong abs (I used to be a swimmer) so I tend to do all of the stuff correctly without slacking and some of the rowers started giving me dirty looks because it makes them look bad to the coach. What should I do? They feel insulted that I’m doing something better than them. Should I slack a little?

Oh come on. Like, just because the coxswain is the smallest athlete in the boat that automatically means that they should be sub-par at everything just so the “real” athletes can look fitter, stronger, etc? Absolutely not. I played softball for 10 years before I started coxing, in addition to a few other sports here and there. I was in pretty good shape in high school and was frequently able to do the exercises as well as the majority of the rowers and better than some. (By some I mean like, 5 or 6 at most out of 50.) Not once did anyone give me shit for it. Our coach would make good-natured remarks here and there like “guys, are you really going to let a 90lb coxswain do more pushups than you?” and that would end up motivating them to try to do more pushups than me or two of the other coxswains who were also multi-sport athletes. That’s exactly what would happen too – we would essentially challenge them to “get on our level” and they would do it. I can’t speak for the other coxswains but for me, I saw it as just another one of my responsibilities as their coxswain to challenge them just as hard off the water as I did on it. I’m a viciously competitive person but this was never about one-upping them or trying to make them look bad to our coach – all it was was me trying to push them to do better.

Does it make the rowers look bad in the eyes of the coach if someone whose physical fitness contributes nothing towards generating power in the boat is performing better than them at certain exercises? I can’t speak for every coach but for me, it doesn’t necessarily make you look bad but it does make me raise an eyebrow, especially if it’s obvious that you should be performing better than them. There’s no excuse when it comes to doing exercises correctly. I literally cannot comprehend, no matter how hard I try, how some people don’t understand how to properly do a pushup or a crunch or a plank or one of the many other ridiculously simple exercises that we do. If you’re performing them incorrectly after you’ve been show the right way to do them, yea, you can bet your ass I’m judging you for it. This has absolutely nothing with how well the coxswain or anyone else is doing it. If you can’t even do a pushup right, do you honestly think that makes me confident in your abilities to move an oar through the water? No, it doesn’t.

Circling back around to your question, no, you shouldn’t “slack a little” just to make your teammates feel better about themselves. Just writing that pisses me off. The looks they give you are the looks I’m giving them right now. Seriously, if they put half as much effort into doing the circuits correctly and pushing themselves a bit as they do getting pissed at you for doing just that they wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not the coach was comparing them to you because there would be no comparison.

The bottom line is they need to step up and so do you. If I was talking to you as a group I’d be pretty damn stern with the rowers and tell them to either grow the fuck up or leave. I have no patience for stuff like this. With you, I would say that as much as I (as a coach and fellow coxswain) appreciate seeing you workout with the team, in this case I would rather see you standing up at the front of the room leading the workouts and ensuring everyone is doing them correctly and not half-assing anything. That means calling people out when they’re doing something incorrectly or when they’re slacking and pushing them to be at the level your coach (and/or you) expects them to be at. Instead of brushing it off when they give you dirty looks, assert yourself. Be a leader and lead your team instead of blending in with the crowd and letting them settle for anything less than excellence.

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow November 20, 2013

We have a coxswain who always covers his microphone with his hand which he thinks gives him this like gruff thing going on, but the problem is we can’t always understand him and quite frankly, it’s annoying. I don’t get why he needs it when we’re not going into the wind but what should we do? Would it be rude to ask if he could please stop or what?

I know several coxswains that do/did this and they were all guys so it’s funny that you say your coxswain does the same thing. If you can’t understand him (and even if you think it’s annoying) you should just ask him to stop. I can understand trying to hold the mic a little closer to your mouth if the wind is particularly strong but it’s really rare that this is actually necessary. If what he’s saying is muffled then that negates whatever effect he’s going for anyways. As long as you aren’t rude when you say something, asking him to stop messing with the mic wouldn’t be rude at all.

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow October 6, 2013

Hey! I’m a sophomore coxswain in high school and I’m in the 2V. We only have 2 varsity 8s because our team is a bit small. The 1V cox is a junior. (It’s a girls team). A lot of people have been saying that I am good enough to take her place, but I’m not sure if I am! She is a bit full of herself and thinks everyone likes her … but they don’t. She always gets confused but I am always alert and know what I’m doing. She is like my mentor and taught me a lot of the things I know. When I move into her spot (definitely by spring) how should I approach her since I will be the better coxswain? I’m just not sure if she will take it well, and I don’t want to make her angry or upset. This is difficult for me because I don’t want her to be sad that I took her place.

Here’s the thing. I don’t want to say that you shouldn’t care about the other coxswains because they’re your teammates and in most cases also your friends but when it comes to vying for boats … they’re the competition. I don’t give a damn about your feelings. I have a very “dog eat dog” philosophy when it comes to stuff like that. If having the 1V is important to you I expect you to have been working for it from day one just like I have been. If you haven’t been doing that and then end up losing your seat, well, sorry but you shouldn’t have assumed it was safe simply because of seniority or whatever. Keep personal feelings out of it.

If she’s been mentoring you, in theory I would think that she’d be at least a little proud that you’ve taken her advice and make improvements to the point where your coaches consider you skilled enough to handle the 1V. But, since not everything is rainbows and puppies I would suggest this:

Do not assume that you are the “better” coxswain, regardless of whether you are or aren’t. That just sounds stuck up and pretentious. If you act like that you can/will for sure turn her off and lose her as a mentor, which you probably don’t want.

Continue asking her for advice if/when you need it. Again, don’t assume that you have nothing left to learn just because you’re in one of the top boats. When you feel as though have nothing left to learn, that’s when you should quit.

Don’t assume you’re going to get the 1V. Even if it seems like a sure thing at this point, remember the saying that “the only sure things in life are death and taxes”.

Like I said before, if she’s upset, angry, or whatever about losing her seat, assuming your coach makes that decision, then that’s her issue to deal with, not yours. If she treats you like crap afterwards then that should be confirmation enough for your coach to know that they made the right decision by taking her out of the boat. You’ve just got to accept that that’s how she’s acting and move on.

I would also suggest not letting the rowers talk shit about her (or anyone else) to or around you. Regardless of whether you all get along with her, I don’t think it’s OK to do that to someone you’re on a team with. I’m a little torn on whether or not this is a self-serving ulterior motive or not but you can also make yourself look good in situations like that by shutting that kind of behavior down immediately and telling them to stop if you hear them saying something about her. Obviously you shouldn’t tell them to stop JUST to make yourself look good because that is shitty – I mean it in more of a “kill two birds with one stone” kind of way. In the long run if you’re known as the coxswain/person on the team who doesn’t tolerate stuff like that, you’ll be seen as more of a leader (obviously good for someone who’s a coxswain) and as someone who upholds a high standard of behavior for the people on the team. THAT is the kind of person I want coxing all of my boats, but I would depend on the coxswain in the top boat to be the one setting the example for everyone else. I’m definitely the kind of person that will take stuff like that into consideration when I’m thinking about lineups. Whether or not other coaches do that, that’s up to them, but one thing you should assume is that they are watching you to see how you react to and handle situations like that.

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow August 29, 2013

This previous summer I had an ex-cox in the boat and she would tend to take my place and cox the boat … from two seat … every practice. It got really annoying sometimes and the stroke also got really pissed when it contradicted my calls. Albeit she has coxed much longer than me and her way of coxing is different then mine. Now flash forward to today when I found out another ex-cox is in my boat for this fall. How do I stop that from happening again and not having it get in the way of practice or regattas?

Here’s a foolproof test to determine who the coxswain in the boat is (this goes for rowers and coxswains-turned-rowers): if you’re staring at the back of someone’s head instead of looking right at their face … it’s not you. I don’t care if you’re more experienced and/or disagree with what the actual coxswain is doing, you don’t backseat cox. It’s just as annoying as backseat driving.

Do you know the new ex-coxswain well? If you do, I’d suggest talking to her before practice one day and just saying that last year you had a former coxswain in your boat and things didn’t go so well because of XYZ. If they have feedback or advice then obviously you want to hear it but, for the sake of not messing with the chemistry of the boat or undermining your authority, can they wait to share it with you after practice. Just keep it casual and let them know that if they’re willing to help, you’re willing to listen, but that it needs to happen off the water rather than on.

You’re the coxswain which means you need to, for lack of a better term, assert your dominance right off the bat. You have to make it clear that you’re in charge of the boat and that you’re the only person who should be giving instructions and feedback when you’re out. If you give anyone, coxswain or rower, the slightest inkling that you aren’t confident, don’t know what you’re doing, etc. you’re giving them the opportunity to potentially be a backseat coxswain and since you already know how that turns out, it’s something you’ll want to avoid. Be a team player, get feedback from everyone and then incorporate that into your coxing, communicate effectively, carry out the coach’s instructions correctly so you can avoid wasting time, know what you’re asking for when you ask someone to do something, know what to be looking for as far as technique goes, and above all, if there’s something you don’t know…ASK. If you do all of this then hopefully you can avoid being in the same situation you were in before.

Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow August 19, 2013

I feel like I can’t really relate to any of the other girls on my team. I know that crew itself is really close-knit, but I can’t help but feel like there’s a huge separation from me and the rest of the rest of the team where I don’t really know how to associate with them and they don’t really know how to associate with me just because I’m friends with an entirely different group of people than they are. Any advice?

That’s how I felt in college (which was the exact opposite of how it was in high school). Syracuse had a program called SummerStart where you could start taking classes as a freshman in July, so by the time the actual school year started I’d already built a solid group of friends over the past month and a half. There were a couple people on the team who I became good friends with because we were in the same major and took classes together but for the most part I wasn’t friends with the majority of them. It didn’t really bother me that much but it did play a small part in why I quit. One of my friends on the team told me several times how my roommate would tell the other girls not to invite any of the girls who had non-crew friends to anything (breakfast, parties, etc.) because we didn’t exclusively associate with the other rowers and coxswains, which, if I’d cared to hang out with them in the first place probably would have annoyed me, but at the time the effort they put into excluding us was nothing more than a source of amusement.

Looking back, sure, I’ll take partial responsibility for not making as much of an effort on my end to get to know them, regardless of whether I planned to occasionally hang out with them or invite them to every major life event over the years or not. As teammates who are theoretically going to row together for four years, you should at least know each other on a basic level. Part of the reason why I think the two groups never really approached each other is because our majors were all totally different (which is dumb because in college everyone’s major is most likely totally different from the next person…) so we didn’t know each other that well outside of crew and because no one really knew how to initiate the conversation. It’s actually a little funny and a little sad how different it is trying to “make friends” when you’re 18+ compared to when you’re 5. When you’re little you just want to be friends with whoever has the 64 pack of Crayola crayons.

Knowing what I know now I’d just talk to them like you’d talk to anyone else – ask them about their major (if you’re in college), why they chose it, what they want to do, what colleges they’re looking at (if you’re in HS), what they’re thinking about majoring in, how classes are so far, how was practice, how was their boat, did they go to the game last night, what’d they think of the latest episode of Dexter/Breaking Bad/Top Gear/whatever TV show is applicable, are they going to see Macklemore/Jay Z & JT/Maroon 5/whatever artist is applicable when they come to town, what’d they do over the summer, did they travel anywhere, did they go to Club Nationals, Henley, etc., etc. Unintentional eavesdropping is also a great conversation starter. If you walk by and hear them talking about sloths, ask them if they’ve seen Kristen Bell’s epic meltdown on Ellen (of course they have but who cares, ask anyways) and then proceed to talk about all the sloth videos on YouTube.

Another thing you could do that helped my friends and I in high school get closer was the boat dinners we had every week. Sometimes I’d be coxing a boat with people from two or three different grades in it, meaning we most likely didn’t know each other that well, but through boat dinners the night before a regatta we all became really good friends and really close as a crew. We’d also make t-shirts to wear when we traveled that usually had our nicknames or some inside joke on them, which was also a great way to spend time together. You have no idea the bonding that occurs when you put a group of girls in a car together and send them to Wal-Mart to get puffy paint and plain white t-shirts.

Don’t wait for them to start the conversation and then blame them in the end for not making an effort to get to know you if they don’t. They’re probably thinking the same thing about you. Nobody likes being the awkward person who thinks they come off as trying too hard but sometimes you’ve gotta suck it up and put yourself out there. It very rarely turns out as poorly as people think it will. I think we all think we’re a lot more awkward and weird than we actually are, which is what tends to hold people back from starting conversations because we don’t want other people to notice and judge us on our awkwardness, regardless of whether it’s real or perceived. I’m definitely guilty of that depending on the group of people I’m with. You might not lose anything by not speaking up but you certainly don’t gain anything either.

To answer your question, my advice would be to just strike up a casual conversation, try to keep it going without forcing anything, and just see where things go from there. See if you can find something in common with your teammates (other than crew) and use that as your building block(s).

Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow August 13, 2013

All the girls on my team are pretty good about the no crewcest thing, except this one girl, who keeps hooking up with many of the guys on the team and the team is slowly dying as a result. I’ve told her this would happen, but she doesn’t seem to care. The coach can’t really do anything, as its always after practice hours. Also, I feel for her, the team is more of a place to get guys than to actually improve her rowing and get faster. Any advice?

If the team really is being affected by her “extracurricular activities” then the coaches should say something. If she was doing this outside of practice with no effect on the atmosphere at practice then whatever but that doesn’t sound like it’s the case. Granted, if they do know what’s going on then they might not have any idea how to bring it up to her, especially if they’re men and especially if you’re in high school, so I guess I wouldn’t exactly blame them for not addressing it.

As her teammates you definitely have a right to be annoyed at her for playing a part in messing with the team culture but at the same time, you can’t put all the blame on her. Has anyone told the guys on the team to maybe, oh I donno, stop hooking up with her? It’s a two way street so if something is being said to her, something should also be being said to the guys. If they all want to hook up and cause drama and whatever else, by all means go for it but don’t bring all of that to practice. If that’s what you’re going to do then there’s no place on the team for you, plain and simple. Without getting into the dirty details, that’s really all your coaches need to say. I’d have no problem asking someone to leave the team if they disregarded that rule/request. Everyone else is there to make boats go fast and it’s hard to do that and build camaraderie with each other if everyone is constantly acting weird or giving off that awkward “morning after” attitude.

In the end, everyone is going to do what they want to do. The only thing you can ask of them is to stop bringing all the unnecessary drama to practice and be respectful of their teammates who just want to row. Point out to them how their actions are affecting the team and hope that from there they’ll recognize that they either need to stop or keep whatever’s going on amongst themselves and not the business of everyone else on the team.

Coxing Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow August 13, 2013

What would you do if you were a lightweight with a coxswain that’s actually heavier than the rowers? I don’t want to be rude about weight or anything but the mentality of it is just hard because we’re not big ourselves so the stationary person shouldn’t be bigger. Or am I just being a bitch?

No, you’re not being a bitch. Other people might think it’s a petty concern but I’m with you. Weight is a touchy subject but everyone has to be realistic and accept the fact that it’s part of the sport and part of being a coxswain or lightweight rower. Coxswains need to be cognizant of their weight, especially when they’re coxing lightweight crews, because it really doesn’t make sense to have someone who isn’t contributing to the boat’s movement weigh more than the people doing the actual work. It just doesn’t. There’s always been this unspoken rule that a coxswain shouldn’t weigh more than their lightest rower and I have to say that I agree with it.

It’s an awkward situation but it’s not really your or your teammates place to say anything. I totally get that she’s part of your boat and as such you’re going to have an opinion on the issue but you guys saying something will either a) cause a huge problem, b) come off as typical bitchy girl shit with some kind of hidden agenda, or c) just not be taken seriously. If you’re a freshman or sophomore, I wouldn’t worry about it too much because you’re just getting started with rowing so stuff like this isn’t as big a deal at that level but if you’re a junior, senior, or in college, it might be worth bringing up if you truly do think it’s an issue. If you all weigh 115lbs and she weighs 117lbs, yea she weighs more than you but not by anything incredibly substantial that it’s worth potentially igniting something over. If you all weigh 127lbs and she weighs 133lbs then yea, I can see why it’s an issue because that’s 23lbs over the minimum and about 15lbs (ish) over a reasonable “max” for a women’s coxswain.

The real problem is how to bring it up and who to bring it up to. To be honest, if I was coaching a crew that had an issue like this (or felt that it was an issue) I’d rather just have you come to me and say something rather than say something directly to the other person and then leave me to piece together the details and deal with the fallout. You kind of have to judge what your coach’s reaction would be before you do it though because, depending on their coaching style, your relationship with them, your coxswain’s relationship with them, etc., it could end up making you look … not good. Unless you are really good friends with your coxswain (and even then, a little bit…), I’d caution bringing the issue up with her yourself for the reasons I mentioned earlier.

Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow August 6, 2013

What do you think of “Once a rower, always a rower?” Even if you have to quit not because you don’t like it, but because you have to? There was a conversation that came up with us about how people who quit shouldn’t be wearing their crew gear anymore. What’s your opinion?

The most basic way I can explain is this: we put so much time, effort, money, blood, sweat, tears, etc. into this sport that our racing tanks, unisuits, jackets, tshirts, and anything else with our team logo on it become sacred to us. We can’t wear our medals all over the place so we wear our gear instead to show off the pride we have in our team, our teammates, the sport, and ourselves. If you’re not on the team anymore it’s kind of like they’re on the outside looking in, you know what I mean? I know it sounds kind of stuck up to say that but I can’t think of another way to explain it.

On the other hand, you bought the stuff with your money so technically you can wear it whenever and wherever the hell you want. It’s not like anyone’s gonna go up to you and say “you’re not on the team anymore, take your shirt off…”. If someone had rowed for a few years and had been a fairly dedicated member of the team I wouldn’t have that much of an issue with it but if you rowed for like, a season and then quit? That’d annoy me (and was kinda what I was getting at up above).

Coxing High School Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow August 2, 2013

Last season (my junior year) I coxed the JV boat all fall and most of spring and a week before championships my coach handed out ranking sheets to the rowers and they chose who they wanted as their coxswain. Half of the girls in the JV boat wanted me and half of them wanted another girl who has a year less experience than me. My assistant coach made an “executive” decision to put the other girl in the JV boat. This summer I had lunch with one of my close friends who was a rower in that JV boat, she told me that after the ranking day some of the other rowers texted her and talked about how they didn’t pick me because they didn’t like me as a person. I asked her what that meant and she said they meant that I was “too sassy and demanding” with them. Now this fall season it’ll be me and the same girl going after the varsity boat and I really want that spot. What do I do about the fact that the rowers don’t like me as a person? Do I just kill them with kindness or what? I honestly have no clue what to do. I’ve had several people come up to me and tell me personally that I am a much better coxswain than the other girl so I don’t understand why people have to use the fact that they don’t like me against me. How should I approach this season?

Ranking sheets? Is that the same or different than coxswain evaluations? Straight ranking sheets sound like … a bad idea.

Here’s the thing with coxing women … anytime you’re in a position where you’re giving directions or telling other women what to do you have to watch how you do it because the slightest hint of anything in your voice is going to be mistaken as you being a bitch. There’s nothing wrong with being demanding, especially in the position we’re in, but you have to make sure that your demands are realistic and actually achievable by the people you’re working with. If you have varsity heavyweight men’s 8+ expectations of a JV women’s 8+ then yea, that would be too demanding. If you have varsity women’s 8+ expectations of a JV women’s 8+ and their abilities indicate that those expectations are reasonable then that’s fine. If you’re constantly pushing them harder than they can reasonably tolerate, physically or psychologically then that would/could cause problems.

How you give direction is another thing you’ve got to be aware of. There’s always got to be some sense of self-awareness on our end as to what we’re saying, how we’re saying it, how it could/is being perceived, etc. so that we can be sure we’re building the rowers up and not tearing them down. Think about how you say things and ask yourself how you’d respond if someone said the same thing to you in the same tone of voice. Would it rub you the wrong way or would you not think twice about it? Try to be objective and not biased towards yourself, if that’s possible. Basically, don’t just assume you’re not doing anything wrong and that the rowers are just being bitches for no reason. If you’re brave enough you should talk to the ones that don’t like you, for whatever reason, and ask what you can do better this season with regards to communicating with them. They don’t have to like you and it shouldn’t be your goal to get them to like you. That isn’t your responsibility. I doubt every soldier liked George Washington but they respected him enough to follow him into battle. That’s the mentality that you should have. Rowers don’t have to like their coxswains but they do need to respect them enough to follow them into battle. That goes for coxswains as well – to earn respect you’ve got to give it. Making an effort to figure out how you can improve as a coxswain by getting feedback from the people you’re working with is a good way to start earning it. In return, you should take their feedback and actually use it to help you going forward.

Should you be nice to them? Yes, because that’s just common courtesy. Should you kill them with kindness? Eh…my personal opinion is no because ultimately what’s that going to do for you? Granted it could work out well but it could also come off as really, really fake, which will just piss them off even more. There’s a big difference between liking you as a coxswain and liking you as a person and my theory on why rowers use how much they like you as a person “against” you is because with the amount of time you’re going to be spending together, why wouldn’t you want to be with someone you genuinely like? I don’t necessarily agree with it but I do understand it. In a perfect world all coxswains would be chosen based on their abilities and not on popularity but that is never going to happen. Popularity is always going to play a small part, especially in high school, especially when you’re coxing women.

In addition to talking to the people in that boat and doing some self-reflection on your own, talk to your assistant coach. Ask her if she can share why she ultimately chose the other coxswain and what she based her decision on since it seemed like the votes were evenly split between you and the other girl. I wouldn’t straight up say that some of the girls prefer you because you’re the better coxswain but I would just say that you want to know what you can do to improve because you want the varsity boat, obviously, and as the senior coxswain with four years of experience you feel like you deserve a shot at it because of X, Y, and Z. There’s nothing wrong with saying you feel like you deserve a certain boat as long as you’ve done the work ahead of time and actually do deserve a shot at it. Seniority alone isn’t a reason, as much as we’d like to think it is. Your cohesiveness with the rowers, how likely it is that they’ll listen to you, your ability to control things on the water, etc. are all things I think any good coach would look at.

For me, I’d also be looking at how much drama I’d be setting myself up to deal with if I knowingly put you in a boat where there’s friction between you and some of the rowers. Drama in some instances is inevitable and that’s fine. Everyone is equipped to deal with it to an extent. It’s part of the game, so to say. But, as a coach I don’t want to have to deal with a mutiny in the middle of the season simply because there are a million other things that I need to worry about. Whoever I ultimately chose as coxswain would need to be able to make it work with everyone in the boat, regardless of their friendships or lack there of off the water. Looking back on the previous season and seeing that there were personality clashes, no respect being given or received, etc. it would take a lot of convincing for me to put that coxswain with those same rowers, regardless of their skills. Their skills could be amazing and they could be a great coxswain but I’d be delusional to think that personality doesn’t play a part in being a good, effective leader. Like I said, they don’t have to like you but they do have to respect you and there can be no question as to whether or not that will happen.

In this order, look at how you’ve handled things in the past and how you’ve interacted with these women previously, then talk to your coach, then talk to the rowers. Start thinking about your goals for the season and use them and the feedback you get from everyone to help motivate you to make some improvements throughout the start of the season. I won’t lie to you, it sucks having to making adjustments to your attitude, personality, etc. just to avoid pissing people off but I will promise you this: in the end, it’s worth it. All those stupid situations in school where your teachers are like “oh, working on this group project is going to teach you how to deal with people in the future”…no. We all know they don’t. What teaches you how to deal with different personalities in the future is having conflicts with people and figuring out the best way to interact with them going forward. Sometimes that requires changes on our end and it requires taking the time to figure out what you’ve done in the past that you could do differently, more effectively, or just plain better going forward.

Coxing High School Masters Q&A Teammates & Coaches

Question of the Day

By readyallrow July 25, 2013

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?

That’s rough. It sounds like something your coaches need to address (or should have) rather than something the coxswains should be forced to put up with/suffer through or handle on their own. Have you guys tried talking to the coaches about the issues you have coxing them? Are they difficult to deal with because they don’t listen, are unnecessarily combative, and just straight up bitches or are they difficult to deal with because they’re teenagers and doing typical annoying teenager stuff? Regardless of the reason, I think it’s worth bringing up and discussing with the coach so that they can do something about it. It’s also possible that they might not know what’s going on or that the coxswains feel this way so they never realized there was a problem needing addressing. Until then though, if you get put in a boat with them try not to get frustrated. Avoid displaying any outward signs of being irritated that you’re coxing that boat because that’ll either piss off the rowers and give them even more reasons to make things difficult or it’ll just amuse them and give them a reason to antagonize you.

Regarding coxing a masters boat, the biggest difference for me in going from coxing people my own age to coxing people who are closer to my parents’ age was coxing them with the same amount of intensity. It felt weird coxing them like I coxed college or high school crews because they’re so much older than me but once I talked to them about it they said they want to be coxed hard like that, so that’s what I started doing. After a few practices it didn’t feel weird any more. I’d suggest just talking to them and finding out what they look for in their coxswains. Are they a competitive team who expects to be coxed as such or are they just out there to have a good time and get away from the stress of daily life, so they don’t need to be coxed as hard? Don’t be intimidated by them and don’t feel like you can’t call them out on any technique problems like you would a normal crew. They want to be corrected so they can improve just like rowers your own age so make sure you’re talking to them and giving them the same feedback that you’d give your regular crew.