Coming to an End...

For my last blog post I wanted to reflect on my time in rowing.  8 long years later and I am approaching my last and final spring season in this crazy sport.  It is exhilarating and sad and wonderful all at the same time. 

Reasons I am thankful it is over

-          -6am practices.  I don’t even have to explain this one

-         - The endless complaining from rowers.  “What are we doing today”  “Why are we doing that”  “blah blah blah” Stop complaining and just DO IT!!

-        -  LATENESS.  6am means ready to run at 5:45 people. 

-        -  Unset boats, rush, people not getting their catches, people who are early/late, people not rolling up in time, ect. 

-        -  Bad practices….where everything sucks and you hate the world

-        -  My time will finally be my own again!  I can go to sleep whenever I want to, I can wake up whenever I want to, and I can plan things for Friday night /Saturday all day. 

-       -   Losing sucks

Reasons I am thankful for having gotten into this sport

-          -Without rowing I would never be able to afford Drexel.  And without Drexel I don’t think I would have had the amazing internships that I have had and therefore I would not have the same job prospects I have. 

-         - Rowing has brought me some great friends.  Rowing friends have been pretty much my only friends throughout the years and I am forever grateful for every single one of them.

-        -  The great practices where everything goes right and you’re crushing the other boats and all your girls are working together and happy.  The effects of a good practice can last 24 hours. 

Overall I will be forever indebted to this sport.  It has brought me so many good things and brought me to so many places that I never would have gotten to like San Diego and Boston…but 8 years of rowing owning my life will soon be over and honestly I am excited for the next chapter in my life. 

How to Get Recruited

 Here is some helpful advice for recruiting:

Make a recording tape

Have a variety of things on your tape such as a sprint race and a few different practice pieces.  This is the time to showcase your best stuff…and you get your best stuff by recording yourself all the time.  Recordings also allow you to playback and recall your race/practice so you can dissect what you can improve on.  A coach or older coxswain can also help you with your recording.  

Send your recording! 

Check out the athletic websites for the schools you are interested in.  Look for a staff directory to get the e-mail address for the head coach AND assistant/recruiting coach.  Most likely if you’re going to get a response it will be from the assistant/recruiting coach.  Email these coaching with a link to your recordings and a brief coxing history.  Let them know you’re interested in their schools and ask for any information they can send you.  

Fill Out Recruiting Questionnaires

When you’re on prospective school’s athletic websites look for a button for a recruiting questionnaire.  Most schools have these as a way for you to easily input your rowing/coxing information for recruitment.  Please, please, please be honest when filling out these forms!  Please do not waste these coaches time/money/effort by exaggerating your 2k time or your accomplishments.  

Take Your Official Visits

If you are interested in the school and the coaches’ offer to bring you on an official visit you should definitely take advantage of that opportunity.  If I had never gone on official visits I definitely would have mistakenly chosen the wrong school.  Going on an official visit lets you get a good idea of what a typical athlete’s life is like at that school.  You get to sleep in their dorm, eat the cafeteria food, and sit in on practice.   Take full advantage of this opportunity and ask lots of questions!  Trust me – the athletes want you to!    

Winter: A Coxswain's Role

It’s below 30 degrees outside, there’s snow on the ground, and your rowers are putting in their hours sweating it out on the erg.  You may be thinking to yourself that you have now become completely useless to your team but you are surely mistaken!  During winter season you are just as much a part of your team as you make yourself.  Here are some tips for surviving winter training! 

Workout! 

Use this time to get your workout on and maintain your weight…or lose those holiday lbs.  Although I cannot run I do love to do circuits and abs with my team.  I’ll even hop on an erg sometimes for a few pieces if I’m feeling ambitious!  Your rowers will appreciate you 10x more if you’re participating in workouts with them. 

Correct Technique

Correcting technique on the erg can go a long way in translating to technique on the water.  Rowers who dip their hands at the catch or slouch on the erg are likely to do the same on the water.  Drilling this technique into their heads while on land can give them the time they need to fix the problem and make the correct technique a habit. 

Take Scores

Continue to take scores after all of your erg pieces.  I like to do this to keep everyone accountable on every piece we do so nobody gets the feeling like they can ever slack off.  My fellow coxswains and I take the scores and keep an updated Google Documents spreadsheet of all of the erg pieces we do so the rowers and coaches can look at any time at the hard data.  Also keeping these scores gives you a good judgment of maybe who came into winter season out of shape, who is improving, and who is just holding steady and not pushing themselves…all of which can be used to determine boats come spring.

Set & Work towards Goals

Last winter season the rowers completed a coxswain survey for every coxswain on our team.  It was a good time to get feedback from the rowers to see what we were all doing well and what the girls thought we could improve on.  During winter is a time when you can still be listening to tapes and trying to improve.  During this time you can also improve rower relationships.  Before every major test piece I always ask the girls what they are aiming for and try to help them achieve their goals.  This shows that I care about every girl and their individual goal and also gives me insight into what to say during their piece. 

New Technologies

All coxies have walked around their erg room carrying the typical pen and pad to take down erg scores.  And while there may not be a new technological advancement that allows you to skip that step there are a lot of useful tools out there to make your coxswain/coaching life much easier!

Google Documents

Google Docs are so useful for so many things….especially rowing!  I input every workout my girls do into one Google spreadsheet that the entire team and coaches can view.  This way everyone has access at all times to every workout they did that year.  That way everyone is held accountable for every single piece we do.  Coaches can tell if the girls are slacking on certain workouts and can compare this week’s 2k to the 2k we did last month….or even the 2k we did at this time last year!  Just be sure to update the spreadsheet quickly after practice, rowers and coaches are impatient!!

Iphone Apps!

There are a lot of IPhone apps out there but here are my favorites!

Erc Calc – My girls especially love this app.  This app lets you input your score from one piece and shows you the equivalent split/time for many other distance pieces.  Say your rower pulled a 7:40 2k last week.  This app tells you that they should also be able to pull a 2:02.9 or 24:35.0 minute 6k erg piece.  My girls really love to use this in the beginning of the year because it gives them an idea of what kind of splits they should pull

WeightAdjust –This app does just what it says – weight adjusts your rower’s erg scores!  I am a huge believer in weight adjusting scores.  If you’re going to use them they simply have to be weight adjusted.  Typically your heavy hitters are not actually pulling their weight and your smaller rowers will actually be more effective.  So this app lets me easily weight adjust anywhere I go!

StrokeWatch – Another obvious one – this is a portable stroke watch!  No need to buy an expensive stroke watch when you have this handy little app!

A Coxswain's Role

"So what is it you do exactly?  You just say "Row" right?"

Well although that may be the role of the hamster coxswain in this adorable little commercial, coxswains sure do a hell of a lot more than just say "row."

This week I was asked by a coach to write a job description for a coxswain.  Kind of took me off guard to actually put into words what I do.  And what I personally do is so much more because of my captain duties so I had to leave out a few things.  First I gave her one of the bullets I have in my resume: “Steer a 55’ boat through the Schuylkill River while executing practice and motivating rowers.”  Then I decided to check what the internet had as a definition.  Wikipedia defines a coxswain to be “the person in charge of a boat, particularly its navigation and steering.”  After thinking about it a while and elaborating on the concept a bit I sent her: "A coxswain is the person in charge of a rowing shell.  Duties include, but are not limited to... steering, executing drills, adjusting technique, motivating, developing and executing race plans, critical & quick thinking and effectively communicating information between coaches and rowers."

But a coxswain really has so many jobs and things they are supposed to be doing pretty much simultaneously.  I am sure everyone has had that piece where afterwards your coach asked for your stroke rate/split/time and you simply forgot to look during that piece...probably because you were so focused on literally everything else you have to do during each and every piece which can include avoiding/not hitting an object, maintaining your rate, telling the rowers their splits, comparing your speed to the boats you are racing, general motivation, fixing the rush, making sure all of the rower’s blades are even/not skying/not dipping at the catch/getting down and away at the finish and so many more things. 

So fellow coxswains, know that you are extremely important.  Know that your rowers and coaches will never fully understand everything that you do and they will probably only come to appreciate you when they find themselves in a boat without a coxswain...or a subpar/novice coxswain.

Imfamous Sayings

There are moments that make or break your race.  Thankfully, I have had a lot of really great racing memories.  And all of them come from a specific call that I have made during the race where afterwards we took seats, walked away, ect.  You can’t plan these moments; they are 100% spontaneous and unique to each and every specific race situation.  Here are some of my rower’s (and mine!) very favorite memories. 

They’re Dying!

I couldn’t tell you what specific race this was but I know it was a head race during my freshmen season at Drexel . . . so it was either Navy Day or Head of the Schuylkill which means it was our first or second head race in our very first season of collegiate rowing.  I remember having an amazing turn through Columbia bridge and making our way to the Three Angels statue in the second half of the race closing in on the boat in front of us with every stroke until eventually we’re making contact and slowly walking through them.  Somewhere after the Angels and before Girard Bridge I called “THEY’RE DYING” in the most obnoxious way about the other boat and my girls loved it and we completely walked away.  I can’t even remember who that other crew was or what place we came in; but my rowers reference “They’re Dying” to this day.

EAT HER!

My sophomore season at Drexel was probably my favorite season of rowing I have had.  My boat clicked really well and we just loved each other.  Previously my stroke had told me that at the start of every race she looks over and determines if she can “eat” the other stroke seats.  During our semi final race at Dad Vails we were dead even with another crew and holding there coming into the last 500 meters.  Needing to make a move badly I looked straight at my stroke seat and said “TASHA YOU CAN EAT HER!”  And needless to say we moved and moved fast!  This is my absolute favorite race to date. 

ALLISON!

This was the very first scrimmage we had during the spring of my junior season.  It was just us and Villanova so the Villanova coach was getting us aligned at the starting line.  The other coxswain was having a lot of trouble getting to the line, getting her point, ect.  In her defense it was really windy that day.  Anyway, the Villanova coach kept yelling at his coxswain “Allison, back it down.”  “Allison, have bow seat hit it.” Allison do this, Allison do that.  By the time the race started (after a false start by them!) we were pretty sick of Allison.  About 800 meters into the race when we were attempting to walk all the way through them and leave them behind for good I called out “GET ME AWAY FROM ALLISON” and again we moved like crazy and that was the end of Allison.

Backing Into A Stakeboat 101

The fairest way to hold a sprint race is to have stake boats.  Backing into a stake boat can be a tricky situation for any coxswain, especially novices.  Here are some tips and tricks for backing into a stake boat successfully and efficiently. 

1.)    Typically you will come up to the stake boat passing it with your port oars.  I typically row up to it with my stern four and have them row until the bow deck is just off the stake boat and then I have them let it run so the boat glides just past the stake boat. 

2.)    From then I typically have 7 seat start backing it down until the stern deck lines up with the stake boat.  When you’re lined up I have stroke seat join in backing it down so you back into the stake boat evenly.  Have stroke and 7 adjust their pressure accordingly to back in straight

3.)    Make sure you have them stop backing an appropriate distance from the stake boat so you don’t smash into it. 

4.)    If you’re approaching the stake boat from the side row up and have your port or starboard side (whichever side you’re turning towards) hold when you are one lane away.  When turning towards the left side have ports hold and bow and three bring it around.  Once you’re straight have stern pair back it like above.

5.)    If you need help, ask your stake boat holder…pray they aren’t 10 years old and have some rowing experience!!   

6.)    Even if you’re nervous or scared make sure you act confident and assured of all of your calls.  Your rowers will notice.

7.)    Practice makes perfect!  The more you do it the better and more confident you will become!  Good Luck!