Videos

Video of the Week

Video of the Week: USA Women’s 8+ win gold in 1984

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Only eight years after women’s rowing was introduced as a sport in the Olympics, the United States women won the gold in Los Angeles at the ’84 games.

Some of the names you might recognize include…

  • 2-seat: Holly Metcalfe, Head Women’s Coach at MIT
  • 3-seat: Carol Bower, Head Coach at Bryn Mawr
  • 4-seat: Carie Graves, recently-retired after 15 years as the head coach (and founder) of the University of Texas’s rowing program
  • Stroke: Kathy Keeler, wife of Harry Parker and at the time of the race, head coach at Smith College

You’ll notice that, as Bob Ernst mentioned in the beginning, women only raced 1000m in international competition (pretty sure the original reason for that was because women were fragile creatures who couldn’t handle the demands of rowing 2000m – no, seriously…). In 1988 though that was changed and female crews began rowing the standard 2000m.

AND, as a bonus fun fact, the next time you watch “Good Will Hunting” and someone asks “I wonder if the person sculling is a real rower or an actor”, you can casually say “Oh, that’s Jeanne Flanagan, 5-seat in the women’s eight that won gold in 1984.”

Racing Video of the Week

Video of the Week: Assault on Lake Casitas

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Steve Gladstone really isn’t kidding when he says they start slow and build towards the finish. Around 4:00 in the video it looks like Belgium has a maybe a seat of open water on the entire field but you can see from that point on where the Americans slowly start walking through the field. With 250m to go, the rest is history.

Related: Books on rowing, pt. 2

The end is actually pretty interesting when the two announcers discuss how they challenged the national team coach’s chosen double and beat them for the chance to represent the USA in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. You gotta admit, that’s pretty damn impressive.

College Video of the Week

Video of the Week: 2004 Cal Freshman 8+

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Short, quick bursts of reminders or encouragement like this from your coach during pieces are great for coxswains because it takes no effort to process (aka it won’t take me out of my bubble or throw me off my game) and I can usually turn what you said right around and use it as a call. (i.e. “Here we go, faster now” –> 5 to accelerate the handle and drop the split), which then re-establishes the bond between the coach and the boat. On a slightly more self-serving note, it makes you look good because it shows that you’re paying attention to what’s happening around you and using the coach’s direct feedback to elicit a response from the crew.

Coxing Video of the Week

Video of the Week: Allen Rosenberg on Coaching (and coxing)

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If you don’t know who Allen Rosenberg is, he was a coxswain-turned-coach who coached numerous successful crews throughout his career, including the 1964 Men’s 8+ that won gold in Tokyo (the last time the United States won before the 2004 crew did in Athens). He was also particularly innovative when it came to rowing technique and even has a “style” named after him. (Did you know there were/are different types of rowing styles? Four, in fact…)

Anyways, I came across this video back in December after he passed away. What I really like about his interview is that he reiterates that the only difference between coxing and coaching is years of experience (and in some cases, a paycheck). Pay particular attention to the traits he lists of successful coaches – all three of those things are exactly what it takes to be a successful coxswain.

Video of the Week

Video of the Week: The Philosophy of Rowing

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Here’s a quote from this talk that I really liked:

“In rowing, the transcendent moment is called “swing” and those of us who have rowed for lifetimes have maybe experienced swing three or four times. It doesn’t happen very often but when it does it really is a different dimension. It’s where all eight bodies in the boat are absolutely in sync and every stroke is as perfect as it can be and then all of a sudden the race is over and you don’t remember anything about the race except that you ended up two boat lengths ahead. It’s an extraordinary kind of experience, really quite an oxymoron, it’s a physical out of body experience or a mental out of body experience. It’s part of that transcendence.”

Racing Video of the Week

Video of the Week: Jerry Seinfeld on “the silver medal”

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I was going through my YouTube likes the other day and came across this standup bit of Jerry Seinfeld’s where he talks about winning – “winning” – the silver medal. It might not be the best idea to post this right after the season has ended but it’s hilarious and the laughing that I guarantee you’ll do will definitely make you feel better about being “first out of all the losers”.

High School Video of the Week

Video of the Week: The Tiger Navy at SRAAs

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Everywhere I’ve coached I’ve bragged about Marietta – I’ve compared every team to them because they set the bar so damn high in terms of expectations, sportsmanship, pride, coaching, etc.  and now not only do other teams have to continue to try to live up to that, any crew I coach from here on out has to live up to this lightweight 8+. What makes me prouder than anything else is that I can finally stop bragging about the boats I coxed at Marietta and start bragging about the one I helped coach. I mean, I’ll still talk up my boats when I can but it’s more exciting now to brag about the things these guys have accomplished. I don’t really know why. My coach and I were talking about this on the bus ride home and when I said that he just smiled so I assume he knows what I mean and/or felt the same way at some point when he started coaching.

So, what’s the takeaway from this season? There are too many to count but the biggest one is that coaching girls is hard. Like, way harder and way more frustrating than coaching boys but it is a ton of fun in ways that coaching guys never could be. I definitely have a new appreciation for it. The payoff is that eventually everybody figures each other out and solid relationships are built, you’re given the nickname “Mom” that you without fail start responding to (even when it’s being yelled in the middle of a crowded regatta), and, if you play your cards right, you end up with a text that says there’s a massive slice of Reese’s PB cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory with your name on it in the hotel room across the hall that you get to eat while listening to a group of girls tell you about their way-too-complicated love lives. I’ll be honest though, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.